Creation : 29/09/1987, Musica Festival, Strasbourg, France
Command of French Ministry of Culture (Direction de la Musique)
Dedicated to : Les Percussions de Strasbourg (25th anniversary)
Musicians : 6 percussionists
Duration : 23′
Publisher : Editions Salabert
For me, the world of 20th century percussion is a jungle in terms of both the richness of the materials and the multiple sonorities of this fabulous orchestral palette. However, far from wanting to play only with colour effects, I preferred, in this work, to clearly delimit all this sound potential in order to focus on a style closer to a certain expressionism. As an admirer of African percussion, which seems to be one of the cradles of a new musical explosion, I wanted to rediscover the sense of ‘feeling’ that characterises it. In the three parts of this piece, rhythmic, melodic and timbral developments remain closely linked to each other, and give this apparent simplicity, despite the swarming and proliferation of all the cells that are added on before disappearing. Finally, one should not see in this work any reference to Duke Ellington and the jazz of an era, Jungle Style is first and foremost, here, one of the percussive “Jungle Books” with its surges, its dark or scarlet colours, its anguished silences and its exalted repetitive tensions.
Daniel Tosi