In English-speaking countries, there is a tendency to put Serge Gainsbourg in a very small box. The box is labeled something like "dirty old Frenchman who liked to drink." We credit or debit him to varying extents for being brave/gross enough to make an album about statutory rape or a song about incest with his very young daughter, for being a lover to both Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin (and using the opportunities to make innovatively raunchy music), for making an ass of himself on European talk shows in the 1980s, for being unapologetic about all of this. He is, in effect, reduced to a whispering, occasionally drunk lothario by people who don't speak French, his often brilliant wordplay and punning sense of humor hidden behind a language barrier. His musical innovation? Often not discussed at all.
The simple fact is that most of his work remains obscure outside of France. It's only when you pull back from "Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus" and Melody Nelson and look at his entire career that it becomes apparent how massively influential he was to the body of French song. He started out in the late 1950s making records backed by Alain Goraguer and his orchestra in a style that was little different from the modern chanson that dominated French music in the mid-20th century, but he very quickly began to incorporate elements of American bebop and cool jazz, the first of many such stylistic deviations that helped form the landscape upon which modern French pop and rock grew.
In 1964 Gainsbourg was well-known but still not the giant he was to become. His first brush with major controversy-- France Gall's risqué Gainsbourg-penned hit "Les Sucettes"-- was still two years away. The Serge that English speakers tend to know hadn't been invented. Gainsbourg was working then on more purely musical inventions, and Percussions is an invention of sorts. It's not the first album to directly merge Latin American and African music with Western song styles, but it was unique at the time for the way it did it, essentially grafting chanson onto African and Latin drum patterns and choral styles to create one of the earliest ethno-beat records. Think of it as an ancestor of Paul Simon's Graceland, a record whose approach to mixing African music and Western song is quite similar.
Gainsbourg didn't take an entirely hard road to this fusion. Three of the album's songs, "Joanna", "New York, U.S.A.", and "Marabout" are built directly on carbon copies of songs from Babatunde Olatunji's 1959 Drums of Passion LP, with the Nigerian chants replaced by French lyrics and Gainsbourg's new melodies and verses laid over the top. This theft is not hidden at all-- it's totally obvious to anyone familiar with Drums of Passion-- though no credit was given to the source. France was just then beginning to close its Colonial chapter, so the idea of a French musician co-opting the music of a Nigerian drummer for his own purposes certainly has an element of ugliness.
That said, I suspect Gainsbourg knew some people would spot the lifts, and I think in a way he hoped they would: Across the LP's 12 tracks, he makes no audible attempt to sanitize the African, Brazilian, Caribbean, and bebop rhythms at the heart of the songs, the direct theft functioning somewhat like a coded announcement of their authenticity. On "Les Sambassadeurs", Gainsbourg does samba so effectively that the difference between his version and the real thing is mostly one of language and instrumentation (I think the tuba completes a pun in the lyrics). If we explore the album for insight into Gainsbourg's thought process while he was making it, a definite (and rather anti-colonial) theme of embracing people across race lines emerges. "Couleur Café" does this directly with its declaration of "I love your coffee-colored skin." It sounds sort of unremarkable-- and maybe even condescending or at least un-PC now-- but in its day, it would have been a provocative sentiment to the exact people Gainsbourg liked to needle.
For all the ethical ambiguity surrounding its creation (in this way it's similar to Paul Simon's Graceland), Percussions is still a very powerful record. Discounting even its musical concept, it is an uncommonly cohesive and consistently great LP for 1964. It is beautifully recorded, too. The female choirs backing Gainsbourg are vividly captured and lively, the percussion tracks have unusually sonorous low-end (they sound especially good on this vinyl reissue), and the guitar sound on "Ces Petit Riens" is uncannily modern. This is something Gainsbourg doesn't get nearly enough credit for-- outside of its sometimes outrageous content, his music was always progressive, and he never was content to stay in one place for too long.
This is one reason he never created another LP like Percussions. He came closest on the two reggae LPs he did in Jamaica with Sly & Robbie in the late 1970s and early 80s, but even those lack the Percussions' accessibly experimental scope and cultural curiosity. In 1965, France Gall won the Eurovision Song Contest for Luxembourg with "Poupée de cire, poupée de son", a song written by Gainsbourg. It elevated him to another plane of fame, one where he couldn't make an album as casually innovative as Percussions and remain under the radar. Instead, he pointed himself elsewhere musically and became the Serge we know best. On Percussions, though, we can hear the Serge that the salacious details sometimes obscure, the musical experimenter hungry for new sounds, out in the open, innovating if not inventing.
