Well-known as one of the earliest pioneers of electronic music, Jean-Jacques Perrey has always believed in space as a perfect companion for his work. The friendly and inspiring 82-year-old Frenchman also invented a technique which imagines music in the most spatial way: he dreamed of cutting and glueing analogue tapes, which developed into present-day tape splicing. Or in other words, the original analogue sampling method. It’s no wonder legendary singer Édith Piaf took him under her wing. iCrates had the pleasure of talking to Jean-Jacques Perrey about his astonishing career.
Jean-Jacques Perrey began life as a medical student, but it didn’t take him long to become distracted by the possibilities of making music. Alongside a handful of other scientists and artists from the late 50′s and 60′s like Charles Trenet, Gershon Kingsley and Robert Moog, he pioneered new ways of playing, recording and treating audio which are still practiced in modern electronic music to the present day.
When did you begin your relationship with electronic music and how did you get to be one of the first people to play the Ondioline (a forerunner of the synthesizer)?
In 1952 when I was 23 years old I was very lucky to meet Georges Jenny, inventor of a revolutionary instrument called the Ondioline. I was amazed by the endless possibilities that the instrument had. Since I got along so well with it, Jenny hired me to be the person in charge of demonstrating and promoting the instrument for commercial use around European fairs. I decided to follow music and quit medical school. A year later, in 1953, I met Charles Trenet, a French singer and composer who was always looking for fresh original sounds for his recordings. I started working and being good friends with him. We recorded 4 songs of his repertoire on vinyl and kept doing shows for first class cabarets in Southeast France.
It must have been a very exciting time. Was there any experience, or an anecdote, which stands out particularly?
One night at the hotel after a presentation of the show “Around the World in 80 Ways”, which I was performing for a week in one city, I received the notice that someone wanted to talk to me at the bar. To my surprise this person was Jean Cocteau. This French artist, writer, designer and filmmaker, who was very good at basically everything, gave me the advice to go to the U.S. to follow my music career there. He said there would be more possibilities and an audience for my approach to music. He asked for my phone number and told me he would hand it to somebody that he knew who could help me find the sponsor in New York I needed. He gave my contact to Édith Piaf! She was really interested in the sounds of the Ondioline, I met her and since then she turned into my best advisor. After a few performances with her and my Ondioline she gave me the hints to get to the right people in New York. After some time recording the right tunes with her help I finally reached my promotor in New York, Caroll Bratman. I moved to the U.S. in March 1960 and stayed there for 10 great years.
Do you think space influences your music?
Space certainly influences my music. I have always been a big fan of science fiction, which I think is related with space. I think science fiction and space hold the answers to many of the problems of this world and I think that the future will prove so soon. Let’s just be patient!
You were one of the first musicians to make music out of pre-recorded music (sampling), cutting out pieces of tapes and glueing them again in order to construct new musical pieces. How did you get the idea and did you know the technique was going to be so big in the decades to come?
The idea came to me in a dream! During my stay in the U.S. I had the opportunity to work on my dream and perfect it in my experimenting studio. After the great guidance from the words of Walt Disney in 1962 to keep developing the technique my own way, I met a great musician called Gershon Kingsley with whom we created an LP for Vanguard Records. We used many of the rhythmic pieces I created back in my lab and mixed them with Moog synthesizers and the Ondioline. The dream came true! And many of the pieces I created with Kingsley became true anthems like the song “Baroque Howdown” which is still used in Disneyland’s main electrical parade.
The evolution of technology brought us electronic devices to kept developing and using the original idea in many ways.
Baroque Howdown – Jean-Jacques Perrey
What was the inspiration to name your latest album Destination Space?
As I told you, I think science fiction depicts our very well future. I think the destination of humankind and answers will come from space.
Where do you think electronic music will be in 20 years from now?
Who can to say what things will be in 20 years?
As far as electronic music is concerned, it will certainly have evolved further, thanks to technology and ideas of the inhabitants of the planet Earth and its music enthusiasts.
As a conclusion, let me cite the last sentence from one of Charles Trenet’s song:
“IL SUFFIT POUR CA D’UN PEU D’IMAGINATION” (“You only need a little Imagination”)
Le Jardin Extraordinaire – Charles Trenet
Illustration by Emily Hayes.
