Urban Confrontations, Made-up Languages and Performances in Mental Institutions: French Lost Music Uprising of 1968

The tremendous effect that the month of May 1968 had on the French way of life has become widely documented. The youth uprisings, which broke out at the university before expanding across the country, accelerated the conclusion of the Gaullist regime, radicalised France's intellectual thought, and generated a wave of radical cinema.

Much less is known – beyond French borders, at minimum – about how the revolutionary concepts of 1968 manifested themselves musically in sound. An Down Under artist and journalist, for example, knew barely anything about French non-mainstream scene when he found a collection of old LPs, marked "France's prog-rock" during a before Covid journey to the city. He became blown away.

Below the non-mainstream … Christian Vander of the band in 1968.

There existed Magma, the multi-personnel group making compositions infected with a John Coltrane rhythm and the musical emotion of Carl "Carmina Burana" Orff, all while singing in an invented dialect referred to as the language. Also present was another band, the synthesizer-infused space-rock outfit created by the musician of Soft Machine. Another group embedded protest slogans within tracks, and yet another band made melodic pieces with outbreaks of instruments and drums and continuous spontaneous creations. "I never encountered enthusiasm comparable after encountering Krautrock in late the eighties," remembers the journalist. "It constituted a genuinely underground, rather than merely alternative, culture."

This Australian-born artist, who had a measure of creative accomplishment in the 1980s with independent band his previous band, absolutely became enamored with those bands, leading to further journeys, extensive discussions and now a book.

Revolutionary Foundations

His discovery was that France's musical transformation came out of a dissatisfaction with an formerly globalised anglophone establishment: music of the 1950s and sixties in European Europe tended to be bland replicas of US or UK bands, including Johnny Hallyday or other groups, France's equivalents to Presley or the British band. "The perception was they had to vocalize in the language and seem like the Stones to be able to create music," the journalist explains.

Additional factors influenced the intensity of the era. Prior to 1968, the North African struggle and the French authorities' brutal repression of protest had radicalized a generation. A new breed of France's rock artists were against what they viewed oppressive surveillance structure and the Gaullist regime. They stood looking for fresh influences, detached from US mainstream pulp.

Musical Influences

They found it in African American jazz. The legendary trumpeter became a frequent visitor in Paris for decades in the 1950s and 60s, and artists of the jazz group had sought refuge in Paris from separation and cultural constraints in the America. Additional influences were the saxophonist and Don Cherry, as well as the innovative margins of music, from the artist's his band, the group and King Crimson, to Captain Beefheart. The repetition-driven minimalism of the composer and Terry Riley (Riley a Parisian resident in the sixties) was another inspiration.

Frank Zappa at the Amougies gathering in 1969.

One band, part of the trailblazing mind-altering rock ensembles of the French non-mainstream culture, was founded by the siblings the Magal brothers, whose parents accompanied them to the legendary Blue Note venue on the street as youths. In the late 60s, amid creating jazz in venues including "The Sinful Cat" and travelling around the country, the musicians came across another artist and Christian Vander, who eventually establish Magma. The culture commenced form.

Artistic Revolution

"Bands including Magma and Gong had an instant impact, motivating other artists to establish their personal ensembles," states the journalist. Vander's band invented an entire genre: a hybrid of experimental jazz, classical music and contemporary classical art they named Zeuhl, a word signifying approximately "spiritual energy" in their made-up language. It still attracts artists from across Europe and, most notably, Japan.

Following this the street confrontations, initiated following youths at the Sorbonne's Nanterre campus protested opposing a prohibition on mixed-gender dormitory visits. Virtually every band discussed in the book took part in the protests. Various musicians were fine arts students at Beaux-Arts on the area, where the people's workshop produced the iconic 1968 posters, with phrases including La beauté est dans la rue ("Beauty is on the streets").

Youth leader the figure talks to the Paris audience subsequent to the evacuation of the Sorbonne in the month of May 1968.