France, early sixties: the Mouvement de l'Ecole moderne is in full bloom. Relying on the experiments and writings of its founder, the educationist Celestin 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 directives. This compilation presents a selection of recordings from the thirty or so records released by the CEL between 1962 and 1982, partly deviating these sound archives from their original function to offer them to a new audience.
The other tracks have all been selected from the record series that the ICEM released in the 1970s. On the title track, the young Frederic Chanu starts singing a bewildering ode to joy on a melancholy tone verging on detachment, making heavy clanks all the while. As for "The Ocean," "C'etait l'histoire" and other excerpts fromL'Enfant de la liberte, they belong in the register of intimate folk, with songs recorded in secondary school (with twelve-to-eighteen-year-old kids), originally written as an exercise in French rather than in music.
