Inside France’s Underground Jazz Movement of the ’60s and ’70s

“Finally, a truly good jazz record by a French band, comparable to the achievements of Django Reinhardt,” wrote Jef Gilson upon this album’s release. Himself a musician, Gilson would end up doing much to elevate local jazz, but in 1960, the question of whether or not this was at all possible was still up in the air.

Pianist Georges Arvanitas’ quintet played in an advanced hard bop style at the Club Saint-Germain. A tight, original book (including Thelonious Monk before it was common practice), and top-notch soloing from the leader, trumpeter Bernard Vitet, and tenor saxophonist François Jeanneau made for a band that could hold its own next to American colleagues.

Save for a 7″ so obscure it remained unknown for decades (even though it featured trumpeter Don Cherry), Free Jazz was pianist François Tusques’s debut. Taped in late 1965 in an empty Paris theater, the LP featured two Georges Arvanitas Quintet alumni, Bernard Vitet and François Jeanneau. Tusques’s original material does not match expectations now carried by a title like “Free Jazz.”

Often quite atmospheric, this is not yet post-Albert Ayler music: it is music finding a path towards new forms and new ways of organizing jazz playing. Tusques himself would say this is not his best recording, but it is an accessible, historical entry point into the work of a musician of major importance. British label Finders Keepers has reissued Free Jazz as part of its extensive work on Tusques’s 1960s catalog.

Something important happened in 1970 when Gérard Terronès launched Futura. Though a small label, it would become the emblematic home of some of the best jazz recorded in France. This 1971 album by drummer Jacques Thollot shows that Futura was not afraid of uncharted territories.

Thollot plays drums, but often accompanies himself on piano and other instruments. He is the only musician here, laying tracks in a futuristic manner to create miniatures, sometimes bringing to mind former employer Don Cherry.

Répression was another album made by a vocalist who had not come out of the jazz scene. Colette Magny, François Tusques, Bernard Vitet, bassist Beb Guérin, drummer Noel McGhie, and an American altoist masking his identity under a pseudonym first run through a collage of themes and texts covering the history and ideology of the Black Panther Party. Magny acknowledged a will to aggressively cover political territories. She did not leave room for neutral responses.

On the flip side, Guérin only plays with fellow bassist Barre Phillips, but Magny’s pieces about police repression, northern France, and Basque priests are equally memorable. Magny’s discography was boxed together in 2018, but Répression’s complete original version remains accessible only on vinyl issues.

Once a sprawling colonial empire, France was home to a number of great African and West Indian musicians. Togolese trombonist Adolf Winkler played jazz and highlife in West Africa before moving to Paris in 1965. A few years later, he founded the band Edja Kungali, with Guinean saxophonist Jo Maka as key soloist.

The liner notes for this first album discuss Winkler’s ambition to “create a synthesis of big band jazz and his native country’s rhythms.” The septet’s contemporary composite goes beyond the usual horizon of jazz sprinkled with an imagined African flavor and deserves close attention.

There is no consensus on an established cannon of French classics, but many would include this 1972 Michel Portal concert. A conservatory-trained clarinetist doubling on saxophone, tarogato, and bandoneon, Portal was highly eclectic: he played Mozart and Stockhausen, backed singer Barbara, but also investigated free playing.

“A little before European improvised music… Suddenly there was ‘this,’ music unheard of, a music of incredible density and drama, skeletal without being fleshless, ‘essential’ and petrifying,” clarinetist Sylvain Kassap recalled for a CD reissue.

Spreading out in the lower registers over bass ostinatos and sparse percussions, this long piece culminates with the surprise addition of singer Tamia’s unsettling wordless vocals.

Veteran saxophonist François Jeanneau did not make an album of his own until 1975. The opportunity came through pianist Jef Gilson, who had launched what would become the French jazz underground’s second essential label: PALM. Jeanneau’s album is a mix of quartet tracks and short pieces crafted alone.

The sound of early synthesizers shapes the sonic landscapes, which at times feel like score fragments for an unmade science fiction movie. The project exemplifies how local independents managed to go beyond mere documentation, crafting elaborate productions.

The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was an improbable entity who made the most unlikely concept work. Constituted of musicians from different backgrounds—including Edja Kungali’s Adolf Winkler and Jo Maka—it successfully mixed together musics from Africa, Spain, France’s Brittany region, Asia, North America. Founded by pianist François Tusques in 1971, the group covered ever widening fronts as this selection from 1976-78 performances illustrates.

Bassist Saheb Sarbib remained purposely elusive. Invoking the Sun Ra precedent, he neither confirmed nor denied an Egyptian and Algerian background. Whatever the truth of the matter, Sarbib was a noticeable presence on the French scene.

This 1976 concert features François Jeanneau, drummer Muhammad Ali, and guitarist Joseph Déjean, who would die in a car crash just six days later, aged 28. Sarbib disliked the guitar but considered Déjean to be “something else”: the way the bass, drums, and guitar fuse into a shifting maelstrom carrying Jeanneau’s soloing to new heights confirms this assessment.