White Mountain Apache

 

SONGS OF THE WHITE MOUNTAIN APACHE

Canyon Records, 1977, C-6165

This is an album recorded in the field by Raymond Boley at Cibecue, Arizona in 1976. There is a brief introduction about the White Apache reservation and the songs themselves.
It's quite different from what we can hear among the Plains Indians for example. All the songs are led by a lead singer, male or female, and sung then by the group. A small percussion and bells are used to support the songs. Here there are several types of songs like ''horse songs'' or ''crown dance songs''. Horse songs seem to be important enough because there are seven of them out of fifteen tracks. The presentation text says that horses are ''spiritually blessed to ward off evil spirits''.
Canyon Records (https://canyonrecords.com) are still in activity with an impressive catalogue but some of their LPs have not been reissued.

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Field recordings by F. Sebő

 

FIELD RECORDINGS MADE IN HUNGARY AND 

ROMANIA BY FERENC SEBŐ

cassette 

Ferenc Sebő was born in 1947 and is one of the musicians who initiated the Hungarian revival known as Táncház Mozgalom.
He started as a singer and guitar player during the sixties setting Hungarian poems to music as well as arranging folk songs. He met Béla Halmos and both got closier to traditional music and dancing.
Soon Ferenc travelled in Hungary and Romania (especially Transylvania) recording traditional musicians in the field following a long lineage of musicians and scholars like Bártok, Vikár, Timár etc...
A lot of these recordings managed to be published commercially throughout the eighties onward. But not all were operated and served first as working material.
This is a copy of a tape made by one of the members of the band Dűvő while I was in Hungary in 1984.
The quality is sometimes not very good but it was for me a good way to get to know this Hungarian music a bit better at that time.
There are recordings made in Moldavia (csango fiddle music) and Transylvania (villages of Feketelek and Szék). Most of the musicians are not known to me except István Ádám whose name was mentionned on the tape. Although some musicians introduced themselves (name, age and instrument) it's difficult to understand them.
Lovers of Hungarian music will recognize most of the tunes because they were recorded by revivalist groups and artists or are parts of commercial field recordings. But maybe there are tunes not so known nevertheless.

track 01 : brass band and singing (location unknown)
track 02 : brass band
tracl 03 : solo csango fiddle (Gyimes)
track 04 : two fiddles ('')
track 05 : fiddle and gardon ('')
track 06 : idem
track 07 : idem
track 08 : female singer with two flutes ('')
track 09 : fiddle and gardon ('')
track 10 : idem
track 11 : two fiddles, kontra, double bass (Mezőség, Feketelek/Lacu)
track 12 : cigany tánc ('')
track 13 : sürü csárdás ('')
track 14 : ritka magyar ('')
track 15 : names of the musicians
track 16 : sürü tempo (István Ádám, fiddle)
track 17 : two fiddles (including Ádám), kontra, double bass
track 18 : idem
track 19 : idem
track 20 : idem
track 21 : names of the musicians
track 22 to track 32 : same band maybe as tracks 17 and subsequent

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Après la marée noire

 

APRES LA MAREE NOIRE

VERS UNE NOUVELLE MUSIQUE BRETONNE

AFTER THE OIL SLICK

TOWARDS A NEW BRETON MUSIC

Le Chant du Monde, 1979, LDX 74703

On the 16th of March 1978 the tanker Amoco Cadiz was adrift due to rudder failure. In spite of many rescue attempts, the tanker drifting towards the coast of Potsall finally opened its hull on the rocks. 300 km of coastline were polluted in the end; It took 6 months to relatively clean the area while the marine wildlife needed over 7 years to recover from the biggest pollution known in Brittany at the time. This catastrophy had also a political aspect : the mayors of the 98 concerned municipalities  have joined forces to sue the oil company Standard Oil of Indiana and make them pay for the pollution. In 1992 the company was ordered to pay 225 million francs (around 34 million euros). 

During the seventies many things happened in the Breton music revival generated by Alan Stivel among others. There was a desire to create others ways of expression like mixing traditional and jazz music.
Francois Tusques was born in Paris in 1938 and thanks to his parents he discovers jazz through concerts of S. Bechet, C. Luter or R. Urtreger. His career as a jazz piano player starts in the early sixties in Nantes and Paris. After May 1968 he's more and more politically committed and plays with singer Colette Magny. At he beginning of the seventies he thinks that French jazz is at a dead end and he creates the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra which brings together musicians from all backgrounds to present a less elitist style of jazz. This album is a good example of this approach to popular music. All the music is Tusques' works.
Among the musicians we find three traditional Breton bombard and biniou players, one Catalan singer and jazzmen like the Occitan Michel Marre or Jo Maka born in Guinea (1929-1981).
There is only one song ''Caball'' (the Horse) sung in Catalan by Carlos (Carles) Andreu which tells about the situation in Brittany after the oil slick when the local peasants had to collect fuel on the beaches for months. There is one line that sums up what the song is about : ''la llei del profit es la llei del progrès'' meaning ''the law of profit is the law of progress''. Andreu uses a vocal technique  from the ''cuantre'' typical of  Ibizza.
Most of the tunes are based on Breton ''gavotte des montagnes'' danced in Inner Brittany.
Note that tracks A2 and A3 form a single track (track A3 starts at 9'23")
Text in French.

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Myrdhin

 

MYRDHIN, HARPE CELTIQUE 

Productions Velia, 1974, 2230010

Myrdhin's real name is Rémi Chauvet born in Brittany in 1950.He has about fifteen albums under his name or associated with other musicians like Pol Huellou or Mariannig Larc'hanteg.
This is his first album  during the seventies after Stivell had open a new path for Breton music. Myrdhin plays the harp and sings in French (his own compositions) and Breton (traditional songs) but he wanted to create another approach to the Celtic culture and mythology. He mixes here bits of Irish legends with Breton stuff as well as his own tunes with Irish traditional reels or jigs.
Among the musicians he invited we can notice Patrick and Dominique Molard and Patrick Sicard who were beginning to be very big names in Brittany and beyond.
This album is quite different from what was produced at the time and illustrates well the need for something new and different among young Breton artists.

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