The 19th annual Seattle Improvised Music Festival took place this winter over two week-ends in Febuary. This year brought a turning point for the festival, as the long-term orginizers turned over the reins to musicians newly very active in the scene, all of whom are directly or indirectly affialited with Open Music Workshop. Open Music Workshop (or OMW) is a relatively young entity, less than two years old, but has constitued something like a second wave in the improvised music scene in Seattle. This shift in leadership was reflected in the shape of the festival this year, which cast a wider net and included a broader range of approaches to music making.

The next weekend I also managed to catch Les Poules (Montréal) at Consolodated Works, a large warehouse-like art gallery and performance space. Les Poules have beon playing together for over a decade, and every passing minute of their long history and musical intimacy. Joane Hétu (vocals, alto sax) staked out a minimalist territory of voiceless fricatives and static noises, which she mined over the course of the performance. Diane Labrosse (electronics) explored a similarly focused territory, while Danielle Palardy Roger’s percussion poured out speechlike with orchestraly various gestures accumulating over time into a complex field. A drama of highly attuned listening slowly emerged full of simultaneous starts, frequent finishing of each others’ sentences, and sudden collective laughter. Occasionally, certain silences were allowed to move with grace to the center of the circle.

With the notable exception of sugary pop, all music styles are dominated by the male. Whether he’s grunting into the microphone, strumming his guitar, or blowing his lungs out on the saxophone, the manly man monopolizes the image of the musician, be it in corporate rock or on the new music scene. When women venture into his domain, they are often coerced into fitting the mold of the industry.

That’s why it is so surprising to find this many creative, challenging, talented women in DAME’s catalog. But one should not forget that early in its lifetime the collective Ambiances Magnétiques welcomed three artists whose musical activities, organizing minds and determination provided a force of attraction for other women. Of course, I am talking about Joane Hétu, Diane Labrosse and Danielle Palardy Roger.

Our three protagonists met at the turn of the ‘80s in Wondeur Brass and pursued their association into Les Poules and Justine. First an anarchist/feminist big band, Wondeur Brass was a laboratory to Joane, Diane and Danielle. They honed their skills — Joane, self-taught, literally learned to play music while playing music in it. Their own blend of modern poetry, free jazz and rock-in-opposition already took center stage on the LP Ravir. From the sextet featured on this first effort, the group scaled down to a quartet (with bassist Marie Trudeau as the fourth member) by the time of Simoneda, reine des esclaves. This line-up soon took the name Justine for three more albums (credited to the name of the individual musicians, La légende de la pluie can be seen as a collaboration between Justine, Zeena Parkins and Tenko) and the feminist discourse got gradually subsumed, making way for a growing playfulness that reached its peak on the phenomenal album Langages fantastiques.

Soon after the release of Langages fantastiques, the three girls launched their solo careers. Linguistic marvel and a rough delivery keep singer and saxophonist Joane Hétu close to the field of outsider art. First she formed her own group Castor et compagnie (with Labrosse, Jean Derome and Pierre Tanguay) which has recorded two albums of sensual and twisted songs in direct relation to Justine’s music. Later she turned to improvisation, first in a duo with her life partner Jean Derome as Nous perçons les oreilles (We Pierce Ears) and later solo with the intensely intimate album Seule dans les chants. She recently proved her worth in large-scale composition with her marvelous Musique d’hiver.

Toward the end of Justine’s life, Diane Labrosse traded in her keyboard for a sampler. After a solo album, Face cachée des choses, a duo album with percussionist Michel F Côté (Duo déconstructiviste) and a guest spot in the latter’s group Bruire (on Les Fleurs de Léo), she wrote a piece for improvisers (Petit traité de sagesse pratique) before devoting her time to improvisation. Parasites (her ongoing collaboration with Martin Tétreault) and Télépathie (with Aimé Dontigny) show how it is possible to handle a sampler with grace and sensibility.

Since the disbanding of Justine, Danielle Palardy Roger’s discography has been growing slowly — she’s very busy organizing concerts as head of Productions SuperMusique. Her children’s tale L’oreille enflée (featuring the voices and instruments of Derome, Hétu and André Duchesne among others) speaks to a young audience with an intelligence too rarely found in such projects. And Tricotage, her improv session with French bassist Joëlle Léandre, reminds us how refined her drumming can be.

In 1986, Joane, Diane and Danielle took a vacation away from Wondeur Brass to investigate the limits of the pop song format under the name Les Poules — The Chicks (Contes de l’amère loi, freshly reissued). Recently they reformed the trio, this time pushing the music toward a form of improvisation rich in subtle textures, blending quiet noise, active listening, and lyricism. Prairie orange is the first effort from this awaited return to collective work.

The presence within Ambiances Magnétiques of these three creators has attracted to the label other female artists with similar interests. The first one to join the roaster was Geneviève Letarte, who has recorded two beautiful albums of poetic songs (Vous seriez un ange and Chansons d’un jour). Lately, DAME’s catalog has welcomed performer Nathalie Derome, guitarist Sylvie Chenard, pianist Pui Ming Lee, along with Queen Mab members Lori Freedman and Marilyn Lerner who each delivered a solo album (À un moment donné and Luminance).

So, is musique actuelle a man’s world? Listen to these few hints and you’ll see for yourself.

Translated from French.

Listening to this record of free improvisational piano is a little like watching a group of bored children on a swing set. They’ll spend a few minutes actually swinging, then the ringleader ventures to hang by his knees from the top. A few minutes later, they’re walking a hazardous tightrope across the top of the swing set, then building a fort underneath. If you leave them alone for the time it takes to drink a single cup of coffee, you will return to find them gathering firewood in preparation for burning the whole thing down.

Like these kids, Lee Pui Ming applies her restless intelligence to devising ways of playing that the piano wasn’t designed for and probably wouldn’t survive on an extended basis. She plays, she bangs on the lid, she lifts the cover and runs her car keys (or something) along the exposed strings, she keeps the pedal down for most of a 10-minute track… and that’s just the piano parts. Lee and her partner Joane Hétu also use their bodies as instruments, breathing, speaking, moaning, slapping and thumping. In the process, they extract an extraordinary array of sounds from themselves and their instruments, and create a landscape of furious, questing, contentious beauty.

Who’s Playing starts with Greetings, a half-minute interlude of slaps and moans and sing-song spoken word. Then we move to the demented, freeze-frame cakewalk of Steps, a prickly jazz improvisation that sounds more like music you’ve heard before than anything else on the album. Silica, the third track, finds us opening up the piano cover and discovering a slithery, metallic menu of sounds inside. Bones returns to the piano as it’s usually played, with a tentatively played conversation between high notes and low, but then Lee leaves the keys behind and drums insistently on the cover for Sinews. The thwacks and thumps continue in the dance rehearsal rhythms of Torso, and, in hearing it, I first began to think it would be more fun to watch Lee play than to listen to her. Belly of the Beast, the album’s best track, layers piano sounds by holding the pedal down. You hear a swirling cigarette smoke miasma — not just the note that’s being played, but the ones before it and the ones that weren’t played but have somehow been picked out of the ether. What follows, Uvula, is certainly the album’s oddest cut — a rhythmic blend of slaps and deep, fractured breathing, moans and tonally diverse nonsense syllables. I’m tempted to be flip and say that it sounds like two asthmatics having sex, but there is such a variety and multilayered texture of sounds that I can’t dismiss it so readily.

The title of Who’s Playing comes from a short, unattributed poem in the liner notes, which asks “When one is completely present in the moment — / Playing, or listening / — Who, then, / in that moment, / is playing / and who / is listening?” I can’t recommend playing like Lee does — it sounds like it might be painful — but if you like to push the boundaries of what music is, then you should definitely try listening.

Born out of the Montréal-based avant-rock group Wondeur Brass, Justine pushed further the ideals of challenging, thought-provoking feminist rock established in its previous incarnation for another ten years. The group released three albums during the 1990s and toured Canada, the United States,and visited Europe twice. Three of its musicians are members of the collective Ambiances Magnétiques, so the label released all their albums.

Wondeur Brass started as a sextet in the early ’80s. By 1987 the group had been scaled down to a quartet. Bassist Marie Trudeau had joined the three original members saxophonist Joane Hétu, keyboardist Diane Labrosse and drummer Danielle Palardy Roger. That line-up released Simoneda, reine des esclaves in 1987.

Upon starting work on a new opus in 1989, the girls decided it was time for a change. The new music taking shape was turning out to be more complex, intricate, and driven by a stronger will to improvise and make things interestingly dangerous. Thus Justine was born. The first album under the new name, (Suite), came out in 1990. It included guest appearances by Japanese singer Tenko and American harpist Zeena Parkins. In 1992, Hétu, Labrosse and Roger brought them back for a quintet project, La légende de la pluie. Although it doesn’t include Trudeau and sounds softer, more introspective, it can be considered as the second album by Justine. Around the same time the “real” quartet appeared on stage in an Ambiances Magnétiques showcase which yielded the live CD Une théorie des ensembles.

In early 1994 Justine toured Europe, visiting many former communist countries. Back in Montréal in June they recorded Langages Fantastiques “live in the studio” — the recording of (Suite) had stretched over ten months. After its release later that year things slowed down as group members focused on individual projects: Roger on the children tale L’oreille enflée, Labrosse on a solo album (La face cachée des choses) and a duo with Michel F Côté, Hétu on a new group called Castor et Compagnie. Justine stayed together for another three years and performed at the 1997 Ring Ring festival in Belgrade (Yugoslavia) alongside Ground-Zero, Palinckx, and Kampec Dolores (a previously unreleased song was included on the commemorative compilation Ring Ring 1997). After that tour the group disbanded. Hétu, Labrosse and Roger have continued to contribute to one another’s projects.

Saxophonist, singer, improviser, composer, and record label manager Joane Hétu ranks among the pillars of the Montréal avant-garde music scene revolving around the collective Ambiances Magnétiques. A small but very stubborn woman, she made a career for herself starting out of nowhere at age 19, to become a successful businesswoman and a vocalist with a very distinctive style. She has recorded many albums with the groups Wondeur Brass, Justine, Les Poules, Castor et Compagnie, with her husband Jean Derome and solo.

A Montréaler born and raised, Hétu turned to music in 1977, at age 19 when she started to learn the alto saxophone by herself, with no notions of music theory. Two years later she briefly fell in love with pianist Pierre St-Jak who introduced her to an eccentric bunch of artists tied to the Pouet Pouet Band and L’Enfant Fort (which years later would evolve into the Fanfare Pourpour). These experimentalists confirmed her musical vision. With keyboardist Diane Labrosse and drummer Danielle Palardy Roger she formed the feminist avant-rock group Wondeur Brass, learning the basics of music during rehearsals. In 1985 the three members were asked to join the collective Ambiances Magnétiques, recently established by Robert Marcel Lepage, René Lussier, André Duchesne, and Jean Derome (the latter would become her life and major musical partner). Wondeur Brass released two critically acclaimed albums in the mid-’80s (Ravir and Simoneda, Reine des Esclaves). Hétu, Labrosse and Roger played in two similar projects, Les Poules and Justine, and toured North-America and Europe.

In 1991, at a time when the volunteer structure of the collective was becoming a burden on the shoulders of its members, Hétu created DAME (Distribution Ambiances Magnétiques Etcetera), a record label/distribution outlet with the aim to regroup local independent avant-garde labels under one roof. Her dedication to the company convinced federal and provincial governments to start subsidizing avant-garde music a little more and the Ambiances Magnétiques catalog began to grow steadily. Meanwhile, she formed her own group Castor et Compagnie in 1992 for which she wrote a repertoire of twisted erotic songs, and performed with many of the other AM members’ projects. In the late 1990s her impetus shifted from avant-gardist songwriting to improvised music with Nous perçons les oreilles (with Derome) and her solo album Seule dans les chants. The beautiful Musique d’hiver showcased her talents as a composer.

Au début des années 80, un groupuscule de musiciens travaillait d’arrache-pied en vue de doter le Québec d’une avant-garde musicale qui lui serait propre. Improvisations pures et dures, expérimentations bruitistes, ses créations, sises quelque part entre musique contemporaine et free jazz, en effrayaient plus d’un.

Vingt ans plus tard, la scène de ce qu’on appelle désormais la musique actuelle a considérablement évolué. Se donnant des moyens à la hauteur de leurs ambitions, les Jean Derome, René Lussler, Pierre Tanguay et consorts ont fait connaître leurs musiques bien au-delà du Québec, acquérant au passage une réputation des plus enviables.

Les rouages du genre Le Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville (FIMAV) est l’un des moteurs importants du développement de l’avant-garde québécoise. Créé en 1983, il a été — et demeure toujours — une vitrine internationale pour les musiciens, en plus d’être la pierre d’assise du genre grâce à la tradition qu’il a su instaurer. Cela tient beaucoup à la vision du directeur artistique et fondateur du festival, Michel Levasseur, pour qui tradition et avant-garde n’ont rien d’antinomique: «Je ne crois pas au rejet de la tradition ou des anciennes valeurs, on construit toujours à partir de quelque chose, explique-t-il. À Victo, on a cette préoccupation-là depuis les débuts, on a commencé par inviter les anciens comme Sun Ra et Terry Riley pour ensuite établir un lien avec des musiciens de tous les pays.»

Outre le FIMAV, le milieu a su se doter d’infrastructures particulièrement efficaces afin de permettre aux musiciens de diffuser leurs créations malgré leur peu de moyens. C’est ainsi que divers labels comme le vétéran Ambiances magnétiques ou le récent Alien 8 sont nés, que la compagnie de production Supermémé-Supermusique a vu le jour, ainsi que la compagnie de distribution DAME, qui assure la production, la promotion et la diffusion internationale des diverses étiquettes qu’elle chapeaute.

«Je soutiens autant les bons coups que les mauvais coups, indique la musicienne Joane Hétu, qui est à la tête de DAME depuis sa création, ii y a 10 ans. Mon but n’est pas mercantile, je bâtis une collection de disques. La dernière parution m’intéresse, mais je garde actif dans mon catalogue celui que l’artiste a sorti il y a 10 ans, car si je ne le fais pas, c’est fini et on passe ça dans le broyeur de l’oubli. Et comme c’est de l’avant-garde, il faut voir ça à long terme: le disque que je sors présentement, je n’en vendrai presque pas. Je vais en vendre dans trois ou cinq ans.»

Un public grandissant Avec les années, il semble que la musique actueile effarouche moins les gens. Ils sont en effet de plus en plus nombreux à s’intéresser au genre et les albums des artistes de l’avant-garde québécoise, qui ne s’écoulaient naguère qu’à l’étranger, se vendent beaucoup mieux au Québec. Même un dialogue s’instaure entre les diverses scènes: on a récemment vu le guitariste Bernard Falalse (Minodor, Klaxon Gueule) travailler auprès de Marie-Jo Thério, tandis que René Lussier faisait paraître son album Tombola Rasa sur une étiquette grand public (La Tribu).

Les Québécois s’intèresseraient-ils davantage à l’avant-garde? «C’est indéniable, croit Joane Hétu. Les choses que l’on pouvait faire dans les années 80 et qui pouvaient passer pour des choses incroyables comme mettre une cymbale à l’envers ou mettre une voix dans un mégaphone, on retrouve ça partout dans la pop d’aujourd’hui. L’oreille bouge, les gens bougent et les gens s’habituent à ces sonorités là. L’avant-garde est toujours récupérée.»

Cette récupération de l’avant-garde et de divers éléments de la musique actuelle cause bien des maux de têtes à certains artistes qui s’interrogent à savoir s’ils sont en train de se faire dépasser par la présente vague de musique électronique. Crainte non fondée selon Michel Levasseur: «Il y a présentement une tendance à valoriser la nouvelle technologie qui, d’après moi, est erronée, explique-t-il. Car en bout de ligne on parle de musique et de sons, et pour moi la source sonore n’est pas si importante que ça. On peut atteindre l’extase du son par n’importe quelle sorte de moyen, que ce soit par une instrumentation dite conventionnelle ou non.

Une relève en parfalte santé

En plus de son public qui va grandissant, le milieu de la musique d’avant-garde compte un bassin de musiciens de plus en plus important. Provenant d’horizons aussi divers que le jazz, le postrock ou la musique électronique, ils sont nombreux à suivre les voies tracées par les Robert Marcel Lepage, Diane Labrosse, et Jean Derome et même à collaborer avec eux, qu’il s’agisse d’Alexandre St-Onge, de Dave Kristian ou de la formation Interférence Sardines. La prochaine édition du FIMAV, qui se déroulera du 16 au 20 mai, devrait d’ailleurs en témoigner avec éloquence.

Selon l’auteur-compositeur et guitariste Sam Shalabl (Shalabi effect, Detention), l’une des figures de proue de la relève, l’effervescence que l’on trouve dans le milieu s’explique en partie par l’esprit d’équipe qui y règne: «Le dialogue entre les différentes générations de musiciens est excellent et ce qu’il y a de nouveau, c’est l’éclatement du cloisonnement de la langue et de la culture. Les scènes anglophone et francophone ne se mélangeaient pas avant et depuis quatre-cinq ans ça semble vraiment changer.»

Malgré un creux de vague du côté de la diffusion et des tournées à l’étranger, il apparaît indéniable que la musique actuelle québécoise est en excellente santé et que les conjonctures actuelles laissent présager un avenir des plus prometteurs. Shalabi, qui a quitté l’Île-du-Prince-Édouard il y a dix ans pour s’installer à Montréal ne cache pas son optimisme: «Quand je suis arrivé à Montréal, il ne semblait pas y avoir tellement de musiciens et de gens qui s’intéressaient à cette musique, mais depuis, il y a vraiment eu un boom. Je crois que ça va continuer à être en santé, car beaucoup de ces jeunes musiciens apportent quelque chose de neuf à cette scène et à cette pratique musicale. Je crois que ça n’ira que mieux, peut être pas sur le plan monétaire, mais sur le plan créatif, assurément!»