On the occasion of Music Week, JustFocus offers you a mini-dossier that establishes the direct link between music and literature. Attention, future discoveries to come!
Like Gaël Faye, rapper darling of the literary juries this year, other artists / MC / singers / hardrockers have tried the literary adventure. A small summary of those who swap the microphone for the pen.
For jazz lovers
How to dissociate jazz from the Beat Generation? Yet it is indeed a literary movement, born in the 50s in the United States. The main novels illustrating the Beat Generation are the poem Howl, by Allen Ginsberg, the novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and the novel The Naked Feast by William S. Burroughs. The authors highlight a recent so-called "spontaneous" writing technique corresponding to the frenzied improvisations of jazz.
On the French side, the one who best embodies the relationship between jazz and literature remains Boris Vian. Apart from his talents as a writer, Vian was also a poet, lyricist, but also an engineer, inventor and jazz musician as a trumpet player. He published under his own name and under several pseudonyms including Vernon Sullivan and Bison Ravi (anagram of his name). His poems have been set to music and performed by Henri Salvador, Serge Reggiani and Gainsbourg:
Gainsbourg was also the incarnation of the cursed poet.
If you're more of a rock 'n roll
Moreover, if you have the soul of a rocker, know that Leonard Cohen has published no less than two novels and nine collections of poetry. Beautiful losers, his most recognized literary work, is a cry of despair, but also of revolt and struggle. Iggy Pop has also published an autobiography, I need more in his image, fragmented, fragmented.
In Just kids, Patti Smith traces the bohemian life and New York of her youth, the Chelsea Hotel, where she dated a boy named Robert Mapplethorpe. Just kids is the most sincere of her books (if you're an absolute fan, know that she has published 11 in all, including Gleaners of Dreams). In the same vein, the Chronicles of Bob Dylan prove that he is not only an immense musician and composer, but that he is also a very good writer, a great lover of literature (since he quotes Rimbaud, Kerouac… etc.). Like his songs, his writing is simple, without artifice, and beautiful.
The most recent to date, Bruce Springsteen published on September 27 at Albin Michel editions his autobiography, entitled as one of his best-known songs, Born to Run.
In France, Mathias Malzieu, singer of the group Dionysos published 6 collections including The Mechanics of the Heart, where the characters evolve in a universe close to that of Tim Burton. His latest book, Journal d'un vampire en pyjama, published this year by Albin Michel, tells the story of his fight against the disease.
For those who prefer big punchlines
And rap in all this? Roland Barthes defines writing as a process of continuity that arises from the convergence between language and style. We know that at the origin of every great song, there is also a writing. Rap is not inseparable from literature, on the contrary. In 1990, Supreme NTM laid the foundations of his flow in the title "Je rap":
"I rap, phase, shape the sentence
caressing, taming, sculpting the words
I master, what do I say, I excel!
I control this area to such an extent
that words, phrases, sounds, rhymes
seem to be the victims
of my touch, my thought
of my ideas
of my phrasing speech. »
Ab Al Malik' s third album, released in November 2008, is entitled Dante and receives the Victoire de la musique for the album "urban music". One of his songs refers to the author Aimé Césaire. He has published a total of 5 books, all of which have a very marked political background.
References to literature are numerous in rap. Oxmo Puccino, nicknamed the Black Jack Brel, published two collections of his verve: the first Crystal Mines, the second 140 piles, a clever mix of punchlines and philosophical quotes published on Twitter.
Nekfeu often quotes the works and authors that have marked him: Kundera, in Risibles amours, Maupassant, in Le Horla… Or the song in tribute to the novel Martin Eden, by Jack London:
And for the anecdote, Snoop Dogg, the star of the West Coast, published in 2012 Rolling Words, a book exclusively constituted… rolling papers! His detachable sheets also contained the lyrics of his songs, and the back of the book consisted of a match scraper… Award for originality for Snoop!
If you have equally amazing references, do not hesitate to let us know in comments, we will be happy to enrich this article!
