music network interview, october 2005

Interview translated by Emmanuelle Marion Péneau, assistant of the cultural Counsellor , ambassade de France

At a time when Rock's renewed activism dominates the headlines with giant Live 8 concerts in support of the Make Poverty History campaign, what has become of jazz protest ?
In the 1960s and 70s, the jazz and people's movement, led by Roland Kirk and Lee Morgan, disrupted Johnny Carson's television shows during broadcast. In between saxophone solos inn the 1960s Archie Shepp recorded angry anti-racist poems. However, climates have changed since the sit-ins of the 60s. As Bruno Tocanne , drummer with trio Résistances explains, "Our perception and our way of reacting are just not the same in 2005"


The french trio's eloquent résistances takes many forms. First and foremost is the struggle against the viclike grip of the entertainment industry on the cultural sphere and its insatiable appetite for products. Recent history reveals the pitfalls : the commercial success of jazz in the 1990s was accompanied by a simultaneous lost of political edge wich had often revitalised the medium in the past. In the past few years retrospection has become the norm...

"As far as commercialisation is concerned" said Tocanne, "we don't live on the selling of our records (income on CDs is reinvested into the production of other CDs), but by playing on stage. Our "resistances" go much further than jus the cultural environnement. We support movements such "Attac" wich are often portrayed in the medias as anti-progress, even Luddite in their beliefs. Yet, as then members of the trio Résistances explained, nothing could be further from the truth. As with so many other areas of life, the internet and other emerging network technologies are providing powerful tools to support such activism, as well as revolutionising the interaction between musicians.

Tocanne enthused "(The internet) allowed me during the last three years to meet russian, ukrainian, japanese and canadian musicians with much more ease and without big financial support. It also enables us to spread our music directly over the whole world, wich, given the risks we need to take as producers and distributors, become vital. And long live to free downloading ! What we are intersted in is to be heard and therefore distributed as much as possible... This is how we will be able to go and play around the world and to meet different audiences and artits.

For Tocanne, improvisation is a logical extension of such communication. It's not just another style of music, it's a social activity, a way of networking. Tocanne, Martin and Keller are all members of a wider collective, imuZZic, wich brigs together like-minded artits from different backgrounds. "We (imuZZic) chose to work as a network open to all adventures", said Tocanne, "wich is not always possible with a band already set up. As far as I'm concerned, I am of a genration wich, from the beginning, has seen music as an act of collective creation, and I am still part of this logic. I am therefore particularly happy to have found musicians younger than I am to accpet this view on music"

As a result, the band's influences are extremely varied. "All artits, as long as they are creative and sensitive" explained Tocanne, "are a source of influence (to us). They can be musicians from Iran, a songer like Björk, a pianist like Bill Evans, a director like Pasolini or a photographer like Robert Doisneau... Each meeting, wether artistic or human, nourishes the musical language of an improviser, of a creator of the instant. Each new experience, wathever it may be, leads us to explore new territories. We are not a kind of accursed musicians, lonely in their golden tower; we nourish ourselves with the desire of others"

Where other groups might play standards from the great american song book, Trio Résistances improvises on revolutionary hymns such as Senhor Arcanjo, associated with the 1974 overthrow of the fascist regime in Portugal, and We shall overcome, the anthem of america's Civil Rights Movement. The trio's own compositions belong to a long tradition of resistance songs in jazz that streches from Billy Holiday's Strange fruit, via Max Roach and Charlie Mingus in the 50s and 60s and into the present with artists like Denys Baptiste and Craig Harris.

"As far as I am concerned" said Tocanne "I discovered jazz after playing pop-rock music thank's to Shepp's work in the 70s. I then discovered with enthusiasm (after experiencing Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra) all that Mingus and Max Roach did in the 50s and 60s." However the haunting and often intensely lyrical music of Trio Résistances, dibbed "poetic miltancy" by one French critic, is a far cry from the raucous shrieks and moans of Max Roach's civil-rights-era classic We insit ! Freedom Now Suite. Tocanne admits that on stage the band incorporates more free jazz elements into its playing than in record, while bassist Benoît Keller felt their sound was "probably quite latin. We have this characteristic of being at the same time romantic and unsubdued, in between doubt and certainty, dreams and reality"

Not surprising, Trio Résistances's approach to ensemble playing is decidely egalitarian. " Each one speech while taking into account that of the others and agreeing to modify it according to what is going on; that is the big secret and the great difficulty" said Tocanne .

"This also means a great confidence in your partners, a will to develop a collective speech. For my part, I am an ardent admirer of the Evans-Motian-LaFaro group, wich represents a perfect equilibrium of three players while always staying on the razor's edge"

As a result, the lines between composition and improvisation are easely blurred. "Both of them are entangled, one nourishing the other " said the saxophonist Lionel Martin. "The whole problem is indeed to preserve the balance between ensemble playing spontaneity, and terefore writing is integreted into the music as if it was improvised - and isn't it improvisation the writing of the instant and therefore spontaneous ? Every morning, I get up, that is written, but I can set up one day on the right foot and the other on the left one, or jump, or even fall out of bed..."
The desire to play something that has not been played before, to approach music as if you are playing it for the first ime, is another mode of resistance for the trio. Without it, there is the ever-present dabger of falling into cliché or, in Tocanne's words, of allowing jazz to "freeze itself into conservatism"

Charlie Haden once said that "As long as there are musicians who have a passion for spontaneity, for creating something that's never been before, the art form of jazz will flourish" the joy of exploring ubcharted waters while remaining true to themselves lies at the heart of Trio résistances's philosophy.
As they sayed "The best is always to come ! "

Notes - Jim Pipe 2005