VIELLES A ROUE ET CORNEMUSES EN EUROPE
HURDY GURDIES AND BAGPIPES IN EUROPE
Alpha, 1975, 34 5016-17
When the folk revival started in Western Europe, in Britain in the sixties and in France, Belgium and Italy mainly in the seventies American music was the trigger that launched it. But at the same time young people were interested in their own tradtions if any and hurdy gurdies and bagpipes because they were both exotic in a way and within reach in certain areas attracted more and more players.
This double album is a good example of what was at work in the early seventies. It was recorded on the occasion of the European reunion of hurdy-gurdy and bagpipe players at Nederokkerzeel in Belgium. It was a good way to understand the richness of these hurdy-gurdy and bagpipe traditions in Europe. Musicians from Sweden, France, Belgium, Czechoslovaquia and Italy (Sicily) took part in the event.
Some of them (if not all) played a very important role in the preservation or the revival of different instruments. The case of Charles Alexandre is interesting : he was from Brittany but worked and lived most of his life in what is called ''la montagne noire'' (the black mountain) between the French departments Aude and Tarn north of Carcassonne. There between 1965 and 1975 he worked as a scholar and collector on the local bagpipe called ''bodega'' or ''craba''. He was in fact the first one to bring the instrument out of oblivion. Here he plays the bodega and the cabrette à bouche from Auvergne. After him associations and individuals started to make bagpipes, collect tunes and teach the local repertoire.
Note that Irish, Scottish or Breton pipers were not part of the event.
Alpha was a label based in Brussels. I suppose it has disappeared since.
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