TRAD & FOLK MUSIC ON 33RPM & TAPES
SHEHNAEE MUSIC LIVE PART 3
HEERA STEREO, no date, H:789
This is a tape from Pakistan brought back by a friend a good while ago. Penjab is divided between Pakistan and India but the folk music is the same. Here we have shehnaee or shenai music by a player anonymous to me. He's joined by two dohol players, two other players with small percussions and a scottish-like bagpipe player who provides a drone mostly with a few notes between two shenai melodical lines.
A-BOUEZ-PENN GAND PJ. MOTREFF HA LOEIZ ROPARS
IN FULL VOICE WITH PJ. MOTREFF AND L. ROPARS
Coop Breizh, 1979, 1003
Loeiz Ropars was a very important man for the Breton revival. Everybody agrees that he was the ''inventor'' of what is called the fest-noz in its modern form. He became interested in the Breton singing tradition at the end of the thirties but mostly during the war because suddenly the old people with their culture were the only possibility of having some fun in the villages in a Brittany occupied by the Nazis. After the war he wanted to keep alive what he saw during the occupation and he managed to convince some singers to take part in kan ha diskan competitions. the in 1955 he organized the first modern fest-noz in Poullaouen ie an evening of songs and dances in a hall instead the yard of a farm, with a stage for the singers, one microphone and a entrance fee for the public. He was himself fluent in Breton of course and a fine singer. He died in 2007.
Among the old singers he used to visit and promote was PJ. Motreff born in 1899 in a family of singers. He started singing in 1910 with his mother. The area is what is called Haute-Cornouaille in French (Kernev in Breton) where singing is still very strong for dancing and other occasions. The kan ha diskan (the lead singer starts the first line when the second singer ''replies'' by singing the end of the first line before singing it himself and so on) is also possible outside of dance.
Here what is mentionned as being three different tracks on side A is in fact one track; this the traditional set called gavotte (gavotten or dans-tro in Breton) with the first chain dance followed by a ''bal'' to get some rest before the second chain dance. So there are three tracks on side A. The two other tracks are one song about the first world war (inside the trench) and a song about a murder that happened in the 17th century.
On side B four songs including one composition by Ropars ''Son ar Distrujer'' (song of the destroyer) telling us about all the destruction that was brought by the state in the sixties when the craze was to erase embankments in order to get bigger fields for a bigger production. Now the reverse movement has started after it was obvious that this ''remembrement'' killed local flora and fauna, caused big floodings and didn't help much the farmers in the end. Ropars was very active against such an ''economic progress''.
Text in French by Donatien Laurent, a famous scholar and musicians who died in 2020.
SOULEYMANE SIDIBE/BADEYA FOLI
no label, no date, GD052
One of thousands of tapes in circulation in Mali's music shops and markets. It was brought back by a friend.
There is absolutely no information about this tape. Surely Sidibe can play the kamele n'goni is holding on the cover and he's the main singer. The mixing of old traditional instruments with synthetizers and other Western instruments has been the rule for a lot of singers/musicians. The kamele n'goni (the ''instrument of young men'') is mainly played in the Wassoulou region and is now very present in what is called the revival of Wassoulou music.
There are in fact eleven tracks but only eight of them have a name.
SATANAZET / AN DURZUNEL
Vélia, 1973, n° 2230004
Satanazet (the Devils in Breton) was one of the first band in Brittany to mix Breton and Irish repertoires. The band was the gathering two brothers, Patrig and Dominig (Breton spelling) Molard and four other musicians. Dominique has passed away while Patrig is still in activity on the scottish bag pipe or the uilleann pipe. In 1973 there was no Irish pipes; Patrick got his own set some years later; another member was the accordion player Alain Le Hégarat who was also an uilleann piper later. Among the two musicians who are guests there is Alan Kloatr on wooden and classical flutes one of the first French musicians to have got an English flute used in Irish music.
Seven tracks out of eleven are Breton, two are Irish, one is mentionned as Irish-Appalachian and a fourth one is of Scottish inspiration. All the tunes are traditional except for track B1 (an dro elfenn) a superb composition by Le Hégart who was also member of a bagad and pipe band and track B4 by Youenn ar Mao which is a mixture of Scottish music and American bluegrass.
I must say that most of the second melodic voices played on fiddle or mandolin are not great (often too ambitious in relation to the instrumental level) but this is an interesting document about the Breton revival in the early seventies; Kloatr on flutes is very good as well as the tin whistle, bombard and bagpipe played by P. Molard.
P. and D. Molard as well as A. Le Hégarat were members of Ogham afterwards.
An durzunel means the partridge in Breton and is the name of a song played on B5
This second hand album is not in a top state but it's not desperate either ...
ETHIOPIA I COPTS AN ANTHOLOGY OF AFRICAN MUSIC / 4 Edited for the International Music Council by the International Institute for Comparativ...
