EVERY GENRE PROJECT - August 20 - Zeuhl
Genre of the Day - Zeuhl
Album of the Day - K.A by Magma (2004)
A niche book of Italy-themed short stories I read many years ago gifted me with a quote I think of often: “We steer our lives by certain beliefs which are perhaps fables but which give us the courage to continue living.” In the throes of deep, confrontational sadness, indulging in far-off fantasies is a vital way to balance out the harsh realities and ruminating moments. Music’s creation is a thrilling exercise in fantastic imagination which it’s rarely painted as clearly as in today’s genre. Who’s better to provide some wacky escapism than French prog-rockers? Today’s genre brings me back to a distant, younger interest of mine, a truly fascinating meeting of humans’ capacity for artistic creation and obsessions with understanding the very core of how we live: conlanging. Perhaps the ultimate nerd endeavor, and no doubt one of the most impressive, is creating your own communication system in the form of constructed languages, and today’s artist puts theirs to the musical test.
As going through this column means finding new connections between musical forms, I sometimes like to predict unexpected genre combinations I think could arise: pluggae, for instance, could bridge plugg and reggae. Why not? Boldly creating a genre of your own is a feat few could lay claim to. French drummer Christian Vander did just that, though. It came about through an immense psychic loss in the death of John Coltrane, who’d inspired him to become a musician. What came after Coltrane? Vander answered that question in his vision of new musical horizons that would pay homage to the renowned instrumentalist, driven by Space Age conceptualizations of a better humanity—one that had resettled on a distant planet and lived in a prog-rock paradise driven by cosmic energy.
This world is called Kobaïa, and the music fully commits to the story of these aliens (the word zeuhl translates to celestial.) Choirs, acting as Kobaïa missionaries to humanity, sing to the heavens over ‘70s progressive rock, jazz, and classical blends, reading like a space-rock opera. Much of the language’s words are real-time improvisations by Vander, speaking to his immense compositional talent and more mystically the idea that singing may just be a higher force channeling through our beings. Across western Europe, it’s evident that progressive rock’s harmonic complexity lit a flame in musicians, such as in Spain’s rock andaluz. Vander’s Magma invigorated those takes with particularly ambitious narrative commitment and inspired a slew of bands interested in the gospel of the Kobaïa—zeuhl has hundreds of releases listed beyond Magma’s pioneering early albums.
Vander’s has spent his musical life unfurling the story of zeuhl in his eyes, and 2004’s “K.A” acts as a prequel tracing the revelations of an archaeologist who spiritually connects with an ancient pharaoh who nearly reached the enlightenment later gained by the Kobaïa. In unenlightened ears, it’s still a fascinating listen—the frenzied glossolalia (a word I learned recently and may never let go of, basically speaking in tongues) of the choirs, the jazz-piano mania and theatrical breakdowns of the first suite make for an abduction so sweet, you’d have to surrender. The full-throated, roiling drama inhabiting the opening of the second suite evokes the catastrophic loss and shining beginnings it seems Magma is intent on conveying. The lonely organ and whimsical jungle noises begin to terraform the world of the third suite, but unlike much music, the words are front-and-center upon first listen; it’s profoundly expressive prog-rock that makes you yearn for the alien contact we perhaps desperately need, and illustrates the endless musical maneuvers that can tell stories that transcend galaxies.