Jean-Marie Massou

Some of you may have discovered Jean-Marie Massou in the film from Antoine Boutet, “Le Plein Pays”. We can see him gathering big stones, trying to clean the earth, and building an incredible cave. We also can see him working with different tape recorders. He likes recording his voice, some of his texts, mixing with some musics and local noises.

Jean-Marie Massou shall soon be turning seventy. He can’t read or write and lives completely alone, secluded in the middle of the Bouriane forest in the south of France. Massou had already captivated his audience when, for more than three decades, he dug gigantic chasms and underground tunnels through the sheer superhuman strength of his arms. Quite a mission, or as he calls it, ‘The Global Mission’ which is aimed at warning mankind that the world is heading for its downfall, that it’s a question of protecting those who are still here. With SODOROME, it’s his voice that we want people to listen to, his voice and its musical talent. Because not only is Massou unusual, he gets particularly involved where few others would in the creative process, and his recordings today take up the majority of his time, he uses several tape recorders to develop loops or soundtracks, re-records the sound several times to create the desired effect, etc. He records snippets from his life on it, makes up stories on it, performs sketches, or stores premonitory dreams from the previous night in his memory on it. What is staggering is that Massou speaks to his potential listener, a distant musical ear, meaning that we are just the middlemen. We strike a chord, one that backs up popular songs as it does classical or church choirs, those tunes that withstand the tests of history and mankind as a whole. We can’t escape from music these days, we can even pick up a radio signal in the depths of the forest, so Massou also uses the modern era to his advantage, he tinkers with modern tools, the radio that he records, cassette tapes as an editing aid and reporting tool, DVDs for extracting the soundtracks etc. We are indisputably close to a real lo-fi music or a set of experimental montages. Maybe that’s what the raw uses of music are, this way of approaching the same worries but through ways that are all the more personal.

If you like outsider artists, you will love him!
It’s an incredible record highly recommended.