Various
Prends Le Temps D'ecouter
'TAPE MUSIC, SOUND EXPERIMENTS AND FREE FOLK SONGS BY CHILDREN FROM FREINET CLASSES - 1962-1982.' France, early sixties: the Mouvement de l'École moderne is in full bloom. Relying on the experiments and writings of its founder, the educationist Célestin Freinet, this consortium of teachers is about to give empirical evidence proving that another approach to music in school can be fruitful, distancing itself from government directions. As the wish to encourage free expression was central in the Freinet philosophy, arts and crafts were given more importance at school; in this regard, singing and music had a part to play, just as much as writing or drawing. While classrooms filled with a joyful jumble of sound-making objects (springs, bottles and basins, dismantled piano frames, drums, bamboos and the first DIY electronics), singular forms of music started ringing out: wild improvising, delicate a-cappella singing, clanks and dissonant string hammerings, basic experiments with magnetic tapes or evanescent folk songs. This approach might seem surprisingly ahead of its time, but what is even more astonishing is that physical traces of these experiments can still be listened today. Between 1962 and 1982, recordings collected from schools everywhere around France were compiled on dozens of vinyl records. This compilation presents a selection of recordings from the 30+ records released between 1962 and 1982, to present these sound archives to a new audience. Includes 28-page booklet with liner notes in French and English.