Jean Guillou - Biloulou Safari (Extended Edition) (1972/2020)

A monumental 85-minute organ improvisation for the music for the film-documentary "Congo Safari" by Marcel Isy-Schwart.

YouTube can be an exciting mine of finds for the music lover. Among the recordings of Jean Guillou that one can find there, sometimes disregarding the copyrights, there is one that had aroused for a long time, some thready questions. What was Biloulou Safari? Under what circumstances was this twenty-five-minutes improvisation at the Saint-Eustache's Gonzalez organ edited in a 33 rpm, which is found, moreover, in the library of some admirers of the Master? What was the content on the B side? What could connect this image of an African girl with an hairstyle topped by butterflies and these titles (Biloulou Safari, Congo-Safari)? Who was Marcel lsy-Schwart who appears in Jean Guillou's song of gesture?

In early 2019, Augure was able to get in touch with Lionel, one of the sons of the filmmaker and explorer Marcel lsy-Schwart. Remembering very well the collaboration and the resulting friendship of his father with Jean Guillou, he confimed us immediately that by means of a fast search in the family cupboards, he would be able to find the original tape of this monumental improvisation whose long passages illustrate the film Congo safari, directed by his father and dedicated to the insects of Zaire. Lionel lsy-Schwart handed us two tapes during a lunch where his memories were coming back.

The exploitation of the tapes, remastered by Jean-Claude Bénezech, allowed us to find, in its entirety, one of the treasures of the work of Jean Guillou, namely eighty-five minutes of improvisation that we can easily consider as one of the great milestones of the career of our musician, in the same way as the Cosmic Visions, the Jeux d'orgue for Radio France or the Charpentes de Saint-Eustache, originally published confidentially but whose CD's re-edition by Augure has been a great success. This recording also makes it possible to find the Gonzalez organ and to increase the documentary fund of the great hours that it knew under the inspired fingers of its young titulaire.

We have chosen, obviously, to publish the entirety of the original tapes, more than a third of which having never been published, without any editing or cut, simply getting rid of the slags of time. It could not - without treason - have been otherwise: this amazing musical gushing is the raw document exploited by Marcel lsy-Schwart to elaborate the music of his film by selecting some passages, then also published in the vinyl.

We outline that here we publish not only the improvisation in its entirety but we also restore the original flow, contrary to what had been done when publishing the vinyl, where the parts chosen for the film were artificially brought together.

Music sprung from the image and for the image, this musical flow constitutes an important testimony of the art of Jean Guillou, of what already singularized him in the 1970s and of what, moreover, led Marcel lsy-Schwart to imagine this unprecedented collaboration: modernity of the language, constant renewal of the ideas, science of the sound effects, characterization intensely evocative of the atmospheres by an innovative art of the registration, irresistible effervescence, electric vivacity, but also exploit of such a long improvisation and, like the many collaborations that Jean Guillou led throughout his career: intellectual openness and sensitive to new horizons. Who else but him, at that time, would have immediately agreed to associate the organ with cinema, Africa and entomology?

The tracks which have been indicated under the name of «Sequences» facilitate the quick identification of the various episodes of the musical narration. The chart on pages 30-31 allows you to identify the editing made for the vinyl and to understand the use made of this music by the director to illustrate his images.

Augure would like to thank Lionel and Cyril lsy-Schwart for their kindness and availability, as well as for communicating us and kindly authorizing to publish this improvisation as well as the documents and memories of the expedition of their father.

Tracklist
Disc 1
1. I. (20:56)
2. II. (4:06)
3. III. (4:05)
4. IV. (9:36)
5. V. (11:23)

Disc 2
1. I. (9:53)
2. II. (6:57)
3. III. (8:52)
4. IV. (4:48)
5. V. (4:37)