French Folk

There hasn’t been a popular dance without an accordion, nor a dance-hall without a waltz, since the end of the Great War. You wonder if the genre was ever “modern” at all, so timeless does it seem… Yet it had to be born at some time, and its parents were a motley crowd indeed! First of all came the people from Auvergne, who began to settle in Paris at the beginning of the 19th century: they brought their “folk” instrument with them, and the “musette” tradition, turning their cafes and restaurants into dance-halls with an accordion band. Later, after 1870, it was the turn of the Italians, who crossed the Alps with an instrument of German origin, which they quickly adopted and began to manufacture themselves: the accordion. Then a third stream from Belgium and the North arrived in Paris to work in the factories, and, later still, the wandering gypsy communities of eastern Europe added their guitars to the sound of the accordion.

Mahjun was an underground prog band that started out as an psychedelic folk ensemble Maahjun. It was named after one of the founding members Jean-Louis Mahjun who played violins and mandolins on the records; other founding members were Cyril Lefebvre, Jean Pierre Arnoux and Alain Roux who were all skilled on multiple instruments. Result of their many influences was on their first album in 1971 a very avantgarde take on folk music combined with hard rock. Two years afterwards they renamed themselves into Mahjun and incorporated more of a jazz sound into their eclectic sound.