The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by the legendary pianist François Tusques. L’Inter Communal compiles extracts from concerts given between 1976 and 1978, revelling in the political engagement which lit up free jazz and popular music in that period.
According to Tusques, the Spanish singer Carlos Andreu was a griot ‘who created of new genre of popular song improvised with our music, based on events going on at the time.’
The opener Blues Pour Miguel Enriquez invokes Thelonious Monk in an uproarious homage to the Chilean revolutionary. Another song is entitled L’heure est à la lutte’... The time to fight is now.
From 1981, the further excursions of ‘the people’s jazz workshop’, in the words of founder Francois Tusques.
Le Musichien is an Afro-Catalan adventure, free as a bird, headed for the outer spaceways. Tusques sings together with the Spaniard Carlos Andreu, riding the grooving bass-playing of Jean-Jacques Avenel, percussion from Kilikus, the saxophones Sylvain Kassap and Yebga Likoba, and Ramadolf playing trombone.
Les Amis d’Afrique was recorded the following year, at the Tombées de la Nuit festival in Rennes. Tusques and bassist Tanguy Le Doré weave the backdrop of an explosive new brotherhood of breath, in the tradition of John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders: Bernard Vitet on trumpet, Danièle Dumas and Sylvain Kassap on saxophones, Jean-Louis Le Vallegant and Philippe Le Strat on… yes… cannons.