Jean-Yves Bosseur Et Le Collectif Musique Verte

Musiques Vertes

Holidays

‘The Musiques Vertes project began in south east France during the late 1970s, spearheaded by Christine Armengaud, who was investigating a long tradition of musical instruments made with organic materials and plants. With the help of elderly people in the region, she was able to construct 240 instruments, long used for bird calling, dancing, as the toys of young shepherds and children, and much more, but which had been lost to common usage following the First World War.
‘In 1980 Jean-Yves Bosseur initiated a programme of collective music-making using the instruments reconstructed by Armengaud. Rather than working with professional musicians, he preferred locals and children he encountered in Aix-en-Provence between 1981 and 1982. Recorded by the legendary French ornithologist and wildlife field recordist Jean-Claude Roché, the Musiques Vertes album presents eleven musical excursions, utilising a series of instructions or games set up by the composer to encourage collective musical exchange, as well as a dialogic exchange between this practice and active listening within a natural environment.
‘Bubbling textures and atonalities, blended with sounds from the natural environment, intermingle with staggering birdsong-alike tonalities and rattling percussive passages, producing striking moments of abstraction that retain a remarkable sense of humanity and ease. A document of pure sonic magic and stunningly organic creativity.’