Chants et danses des montagnards du Viet-Nam

 

CHANTS ET DANSES DES MONTAGNARDS DU VIET-NAM

RICHESSE DU FOLKLORE N°14

SONGS AND DANCES OF THE VIETNAMESE MOUTAIN PEOPLE 

A WEALTH OF FOLKLORE N°14

Riviéra, 1967, 421.075 P 

This very short but exciting album was made by Maurice Bitter a French ''globe-trotter'' who was active in the sixties and the seventies. At that time France had several men (as it was the case then) who used to travel to very remote lands in order to record local music unheard by French ordinary music lovers. There was a name for them, ''chasseurs de sons'' or ''sound-hunters'' and sometimes they had the opportunity to present their findings on national French radio programmes. Bitter had a programme called ''beyond the seas" that I listened to, late in the evening when I was a kid in the early seventies. He was also a journalist, a writer and a televison producer. He died in 1997.

Here Bitter was very fortunate to have been able to make that trip over to the high plateaux of central Viet-Nam. But he precises that all side B was recorded in difficult conditions although he doesn't specify them. Civil war between North and South Viet-Nam had already begun in 1959 and from 1965 the USA sent massive numbers of GIs and bombed North Viet-nam heavily. Caught bewteen were the mountain people made up of ethnic groups. Bitter gives no information about their situation when he was there. It was peaceful enough according to the quality of the singning and the playing by these people. In fact we don't know when these recordings were made.
The technical quality is not great though but Riviéra had the right reaction to publish these recordings for a large audience. All the tracks are great in spite of noise interference.
Note that tracks BIII and BIV are together.
Short text of introduction in English about the disc and the tracks.

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Fest Noz Nevez

 

FEST.NOZ NEVEZ  INEDITS

NEW FEST.NOZ    UNPUBLISHED

 

Arfolk, 1974, SB 320, SB 321 

 

Arfolk is one the oldest Breton labels founded in Lorient in 1967 by Jo Gragnic. Following its primary goal the promotion of Breton music  the label recorded different  artists and genre : the traditional kan ha diskan and binioù & bombard music as well as bagadoù, the Breton pipe-bands. When the revival started in Brittany launched by Stivell among others Arfolk also  recorded plenty of folk bands.
Here we have a double album with traditional or so singers and musicians as well as folk groups. There are no information about the songs and tunes or the people. If we believe the label all these tracks are unpublished and were made especially for this album.
The sentence on the cover means ''Breton music is''.
So to help you to follow and enjoy the music I list below what types of dances are presented  here.

disc 1 :
A1 the Pennec brothers play a three-part set from the Fisel country made of fisel-bal-fisel
A2 the Pennec brothers play a particular gavotte from the Pourlet country
A3 Yann Vikel Bourdieg sings a laridé in Breton from the Vannes country with the band           called an Trouzerion Goh (see my earlier post)
A4 Ar Penseerien (the shipwreckers in Breton) play one gavotte from Inner Brittany

B1/B2/B3  the Coulouarn sisters sing  a set (plin-bal-plin) from the Fanch country

B4 the Kergosien brothers play two an dro (the circle). The first an dro  is a peculier one;
      the tune sounds identical to ''estolisan to sperveri'' a wedding song from the Greek island       of Rhodes. I knew the Greek song before getting this album and it stroke me                          immediately. Is it possible that a Breton tune from the Vannes country be more than          similar to a Greek tune without any contacts ? or did these ''sonneurs'' adopted this                wedding song that can be danced to like an dro ? The Greek song is performed by a               traditional female singer and choir with a lyra and a laouto players who were members          of a folk ensemble set up by Simon Karas the great musicologist on the album named in       French ''Voyage en Grèce-Simon Karas'' published by Le Chant du Monde in the 1970s.       I added this track to this album.
B5 the Kergosien brothers play a laridé

 

disc 2 :
A1 Sonerien Du (the Black Pipers/Musicians in Breton) play a set of gavotten-tamm kreiz-         gavotten (ar menez)
A2/A3/A4 the Coulouarn sisters sing a gavotten-tamm kreiz-gavotten
A5 the Pennec brothers play perhaps a set of ''ronds'' from Loudéac with a bal between
B1 the Kergosien brothers play an an dro
B2 the Coulouarn sisters sing a set of gavotten ar menez with a tamm kreiz (litteraly the bit       in the middle) between
B3 the folk band Kouerien Sant Yann play two laridé (round dance from the Vannetais                 country)

Globally this compilation is not the best one but not the worst either. Although Sonerien Du have been one of the big folk bands for decades I'm not that gone on them. To me the best part is the track by Kouerien Sant Yann (the Peasants from Saint John) with an interesting approach to music played by solid musicians. They had three albums out on the Arfolk label. Unlike Sonerien Du the band disbanded in the eighties. Their albums were reissued on different CDs. Alain Pennec was also a member of Kouerien.

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Musique Gouro de Côte d'Ivoire

 

MUSIQUE GOURO de CÔTE D'IVOIRE

Anthologie de la musique populaire

GOURO MUSIC FROM THE IVORY COAST 

International folk music council

Ocora, ?, OCR 48

Here is the 300th post on this blog; I still have time to wish you  the best year 2025 possible and to thank you for following this blog.

This is another LP that is not part of Ocora's catalogue. These field recordings were made in December 1968 and January 1969 by Michel Vuylsteke. The Gouro are located in a region of forest and savannah. As usual the music and the population are  described so I won't say much except that this music is rare enough and of great quality. Like almost everywhere in Africa, every moment of social life is a moment for music-making (encouraging farmers, funeral songs, grinding grain, ...)
Text in English (and French)

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Musiques du Pays Lobi

 

MUSIQUES DU PAYS LOBI

MUSIC FROM THE LOBI COUNTRY 

Disques OCORA/ORTF,  1970, OCR 51

This is another album that didn't make it to the present Ocora catalogue. Charles Duvelle (1937-2017) recorded these musics in the field in 1961 in what was called at the time Upper Volta now Burkina Faso.
Side A focuses on Lobi music with three tracks of elong xylophone and singing plus one track with women singing. Side B presents some Gan, Dagari and Birifor music.
As usual the notes are informative enough to understand what's happening.
A very nice album with some exciting and powerful  music on the xylophone well recorded.
Text in English (and French). 

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Ethiopia II : Cushites

 

 

ETHIOPIA II - CUSHITES

AN ANTHOLOGY OF AFRICAN MUSIC / 5
Edited for the International Music Council by the International Institute for
Comparative Music Studies and Documentation 

Musicaphon Bärenreiter/Unesco Collection, 1970, BM 30 L 2005

 

 This is the second album of the Anthology of African Music dedicated to Ethiopia. These are field recordings also made by Jean Jenkins in 1965. This time she focused on black tribes in South-West Ethiopia near the Kenyan border in the provinces of Gomu-Gofa and Sidamo. This part of Ethiopia is the home of Cushitic-speaking peoples a linguistic family  but whose different variants are sometimes far removed from one another. This and the nature of terrain (no real roads, rivers impossible to cross after rain, mountains...) helped the tribes to preserve specific character especially in music. The people she visited were the Gidole, Konso, Burji, Kaffa, Dorze, Sidamo, Soddu, Kumama and Darassa. Most of the tracks are about singing (in group or individual); the instruments we can hear are horns, flutes ensembles (one man one note), and the indigenous lyre (called krar in Amharic).

Since the sixties other musicologists worked on these populations notably Bernard Lortat-Jacob who spent time with the Dorze and their mighty polyphonic singing. He died last summer in July.  You can listen to some of his unpublished recordings here :
https://archives.crem-cnrs.fr/archives/collections/CNRSMH_I_1975_004/

Texts in English (French and German).
This being the first post in 2025 let me wish you all the best to you.

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