{"id":56117,"date":"2020-07-21T11:20:48","date_gmt":"2020-07-21T10:20:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/jazzmen-fous-dafrique-byg-etats-durgence-au-festival-panafricain-dalger-1969\/"},"modified":"2020-07-21T14:09:32","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T13:09:32","slug":"crazy-jazzmen-of-africa-byg-and-the-1969-pan-african-music-festival-in-algeria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/crazy-jazzmen-of-africa-byg-and-the-1969-pan-african-music-festival-in-algeria\/","title":{"rendered":"Crazy Jazzmen of Africa: BYG and the 1969 Pan-African music festival in Algeria"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Episode <\/a>3: BYG Records, an adventurous label, released a series of albums in the autumn of 1969 which became legendary when they invited the cream of American free jazz back from the Pan-African Festival in Algiers. A historic moment.<\/b><\/h4>\n

Photo: <\/em>cover of\u00a0 Yasmina ,A Black Woman by Archie Shepp<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

August 1969, was Paris burning?<\/h5>\n

Our story begins when a band of jazz musicians has just disembarked from Algiers to record a series of albums that would become legendary: BYG! The label chose this acronym as its name, using the initials of their three founding fathers (Fernand) Boruso, (Jean-Luc) Young and Jean Georgakarakos, better known as Karakos.<\/span><\/p>\n

It all started in the spring by the Champs- \u00c9lys\u00e9es. \u201c Our offices were on Avenue de Friedland, and we regularly saw the soon-to-be big producer Philippe Constantin for coffee when he was working on Rue Lord Byron. We were two rival but friendly bands. I found out he wanted to start a free jazz label for EMI. We were on the same wavelength\u2026 <\/i>\u201d remembered Karakos with a smile in 2014. In order to achieve this, he got backing from Claude Delcloo, a French drummer connected with the African American scene, and Jacques Bisceglia, a young jazz photographer. The first \u2013 editor-in-chief of the avant-garde music magazine Actuel<\/i> \u2013 asked the second \u2013 who was leaving for the Pan-African festival in Algiers at the end of July \u2013 to recruit musicians and bring them back to Paris.
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Archie Shepp\u00a0\u00a9 Guy Le Querrec \/ Magnum<\/p><\/div>\n


<\/b><\/span>Algiers, \u2018Mecca for revolutionaries\u2019<\/b>
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It was July 1969, and the city had become the capital of alternative movements. Summer on the other side of the Mediterranean promised to be a scorcher. The Black Panthers were spearheading their movement and had taken up residence in the white city, which had become \u2018Mecca for revolutionaries\u2019. In Algiers, where Eldridge Cleaver (the Black Panthers\u2019 information minister who was wanted by the FBI and the CIA) had taken refuge, the Boumedi\u00e8ne government, having seized power in a coup d’\u00e9tat four years earlier, planned to improve its image by organising a huge cultural festival, reflecting post-colonial politics. It would be the Pan-African Festival of Algiers, where many activists, from both sides of the Atlantic, would meet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Intellectuals such as the Senegalese anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop gave lectures alongside the great leaders of African liberation movements such as Am\u00edlcar Cabral and Agostinho Neto. There were African American civil rights poets like Maya Angelou and Ted Joans. Barry White, Nina Simone, and Manu Dibango were also there celebrating. But they weren\u2019t the only ones in the overheating capital.
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In 1969, South African Miriam Makeba, who had been banned from her country for ten years, had just married Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael. Having become persona non grata in the United States, she would go on to compose \u201cDo You Remember Malcolm\u201d. Blacklisted and forced into exile once again, she found herself in Conakry, Guinea where President Ahmed S\u00e9kou Tour\u00e9 (the man who had said a firm \u2018no\u2019 to De Gaulle\u2019s proposal that the country join a French community of nations, thus winning Guinea its independence) had become the focus of Black Pride on the continent and gave her a triumphant welcome. Makeba had the ear of an entire continent and was nicknamed \u2018Mama Africa\u2019. She remains an example for future generations fighting against segregation. The \u2018Guinean\u2019 Miriam Makeba was then made an Algerian citizen, and converted many young North African students to her cause. At the Atlas Hall at Bab El Oued, she sang \u201cAna Hourra fi El Djaza\u00efr!\u201d \u2013 I am free in Algeria! \u2013 in the presence of President Boumedi\u00e8ne. With black glasses and dressed all in white, her presence made a lasting impression.
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Photographer William Klein kept track of this performance in a documentary that has been described as a \u2018Third World Opera\u2019. The observer is immersed in the middle of the action, in the streets as well as in the caf\u00e9s, on stage and backstage. The unfolding movement was on everybody\u2019s lips and, for a summer, the idea of an African utopia was in the spotlight once more.
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<\/span>\u2018Jazz is African power\u2019
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Cal Massey, Oscar Peterson, Lester Bowie, Dave Burrell, Julio Finn, Malachi Flavors, Burton Greene, Philly Joe Jones, Jeanne Lee, Hank Mobley, Grachan Moncur III, Sunny Murray, Archie Shepp, Clifford Thortorn, Randy Weston\u2026In Algiers, jazz was widely represented and duly celebrated, in all styles, though primarily through a free, open-minded style of jazz. The blues too, with Chicago Beau, as well as the gospel of Marion Williams. The joy and togetherness of an elated public felt really real during the happy reunion of the festival.<\/span><\/p>\n

” The atmosphere was very warm and welcoming: each African country was represented, as well as the diaspora. It was beautiful. It was beautiful!\u2019 recalled Archie Shepp forty years later. \u2018Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther minister in exile in Algeria, invited me. I knew them but I wasn\u2019t close to them. For us black Americans there was great excitement and pride in being there. We weren’t thinking in terms of North Africa, the Maghreb: it was more about the African continent.<\/em> ”
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Archie Shepp<\/p><\/div>\n


<\/span>In 1969, the saxophonist became aware of another reality, one more concrete than theoretical. The images of the gig he played with his growing quartet bear witness to this. Wearing a djellaba, Archie the post-Marxist kisses the ground, before coming on stage. \u2018We’re black Americans, we’re Africans from the United States, we’re Africans first and foremost. We’re back. Jazz is black power, jazz is African power, jazz is African music.\u2019 The message is clear. \u2018From Chicago, From Alabama,\u2019 a poet shouts as a group of Algerians clap their hands. From out of this melting pot cry Archie\u2019s saxophone and Clifford Thorton’s cornet. \u2018We’re back!\u2019. In this crazy atmosphere the band of jazzmen take off, surrounded by whirling rhythms, tablahs and qalaqebs crash, zurna and zukra trace out spherical arabesques. It is an experience, a performance, all in a trance together. The two sides of the LP that will be released on BYG remind us that much during these performances was improvised and came from the heat of the moment. The drummer Sunny Murray \u2013 known for drumming in a manner as brilliant as it is wild and unexpected \u2013 was turned on his head by the earthy power of the percussion. \u2018Brotherwood At Ketchaoua\u2019 stresses another song. By the end of July, the atmosphere was one of brotherhood beyond words, despite the odd slight misunderstanding. It\u2019s not always easy to agree.<\/span>\u00a0
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<\/b><\/span>The free waves of Algiers radiate over Paris<\/b>
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August 1969. Paris Orly airport. The final step on a great journey for most of the young free jazz lovers who\u2019d filled up on music in Algiers. Jacques Bisceglia came to the Pan-African festival and took advantage of the occasion to make a date. See you in Paris? No! The party’s not quite over yet! Limousines were waiting to take everybody to the Prince of Wales Hotel. \u2018We had negotiated the rates to death, but it worked and the guys were amazed! It wasn’t the kind of consideration they would get in the States\u2019 says Karakos amused, never short of crisp details. All night long they would be signing contracts \u2013 sometimes painfully. Joseph Jarman of the Art Ensemble of Chicago even pulled out his knife saying \u2018that’s my lawyer!\u2019. Archie Shepp would hold onto some bitterness all his life, feeling cheated…Most of this \u2018new thing\u2019 (i.e. free jazz) would be recorded during August. Some would stay in Paris, such as the Art Ensemble, Alan Silva, and Archie Shepp, appearing again…<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of them made one, sometimes several, recordings under their own names, all of them taking part in numerous sessions which took place at the Saravah studios, on Passage des Abbesses, then \u2013 when space ran out \u2013 at the Davout studios, in Porte de Bagnolet. Archie Shepp would create a few magic records \u2013 <\/span>Yasmina, A Black Woman<\/span><\/i>, and <\/span>Blas\u00e9<\/span><\/i> with the eternal Jeanne Lee…but this wasn\u2019t the only landmark moment in this series.<\/span><\/p>\n

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One session followed another with intensity. In dark glasses and suffering from many sleepless nights, everyone was all over the place. The feeling of a state of emergency emerged, with tempo in turmoil. At the beginning of October the records dropped. With their multi-coloured cover and double gatefold, they perfectly illustrated the ambitions of the label: \u2018To put the latest contemporary jazz back in the spotlight of pop culture.\u2019 Almost immediately, Melody Maker devoted a full page to the story. For years later the shock waves would resonate in the rock scene \u2013 Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth never hid his references, just like the label Numero Group, from Chicago. No doubt about it, the free jazz agitators of the BYG Actuel series have long since become music legends. And though these firebrands set fire to the Paris underground, they always maintained an echo of the sacred fire that had fuelled the Pan-African Festival in Algiers<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/span><\/em>Discover other articles in our series, Crazy Jazzmen of Africa<\/a> by Jacques Denis<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Follow Jacques Denis on Twitter<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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