SKED

 

SKED

Production Velia, ?, 2230025

Among the numerous Breton bands Sked is probably one of the least know now. Sked (meaning ''glossy'', ''shiny'' in Breton) made only one album maybe in 1975. The band had some musicians who became famous later like Jean-François Sibéril known as Soïg Siberil on guitar and Jean-Pol Huellou on tin whistle and classical metal flute. Others were also very important at that time like Alain Le Hegarat on uilleann pipes who was one of the first Breton people to have discovered Irish music at the end of the fifties; he went to Ireland in 1960 and started with a practice set around 1972. He was born in 1939 and is still with us. He and Alain Trovel (keyboards) recorded a beautiful album with uilleann pipes and organ which was reissued on CD. In the band were also present the Colleu brothers, Philippe on banjo and Yvon on accordion and guitare. Philippe is well known in Brittany and Normandy for his works on the maritime repertoire from these regions. Two more musicians were parts of the band : Brendan Fahy on guitar, bodhran and vocal (but he doesn't sing on the album) and Gunter Buchwald on fiddle.
The repertoire is mostly Breton with two Irish sets; there is also one melody maybe Scottish, Kingussie Flowers. Note that B1 is not the Humours of Lissadel but O'Neill's March and the Battle of Aughrim and is followed by B2 ''an dro''. The interesting thing about Sked is that like other bands they worked on a traditional Breton repertoire with an Irish approach which was quite innovative at that time. 

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RAUL MALDONADO

 

GUITARE ET CHANTS D'ARGENTINE

GUITAR AND SONGS FROM ARGENTINA

RAUL MALDONADO 

SFP, ?, 52005

 Raul Maldonado was born in Argentina in 1937 in a small place in the pampa but lived partly in France where he recorded this album during the sixties. At the age of twelve he met with Abel Fleury, one of the greatest Argentinian composer for guitar. Maldonado plays some of Fleury's works on side A. He also studied guitar with A. Yupanqui and other musicians. He is mostly a solo guitar player but he worked with Los Calchakis as well as other ensembles.
Side B has some compositions by A. de Robertis the kena player.
This is popular kind of music by learned composers and musicians who loved the songs and music of the people of Argentina and promoted them all around the world.

To know more about Maldonado : http://www.raulmaldonado.fr/

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Bogue d'Or 1989

 

CHANTS TRADITIONNELS DE HAUTE-BRETAGNE

BOGUE D'OR 1989

Chanteurs et musiciens de Bretagne n°3

TRADITIONAL SONGS FROM UPPER BRITTANY

GOLDEN CHESTNUT-BAR 1989

Singers and musicians of Brittany n°3

Dastum, 1990, DAS-113 

This is one of the few tapes that Dastum never reissued on CD. As the title shows it is about an annual competition for singers ans musicians in the Eastern part of Brittany where the Breton language was never spoken or disappeared during rhe Middle Ages. But there is another language spoken along with  French , a dialect called Gallo, a Romance dialect. The term ''upper'' means that this part of Brittany is closer to Paris than ''lower Brittany'' and had implied for a very long time that Eastern Brittany was more ''civilized'' than the Western part where Breton is still in use. But of course the Gallo dialect was also considered as a local dialect of no importance which should have disappeared as well for the benefit of French. When the Breton folk revival started it was all about the Breton tongue and history and Gallo was not part of that cultural and political movement. The people of Upper Brittany considered themselves as Breton as the others and managed to set up many associations and bodies in order to preserve their own culture.
One way of preserving that dialect and musical culture was to organize a competition open to all. Here we have the final competition, after the qualifying rounds were over, held in Redon on the 29th of October 1989. It's called ''Golden Chestnut-bar'' because chestnuts are a major product in the local economy.
Singers are quite dominant and the interest of this competition is that everybody being welcome it gives a vivid image of what the local singing was like at the time with children, adults and older people, all singing on their own with sometimes the help of the crowd which respond to the singers when necessary. All the repertoire is traditionnal except for the song on B7 composed by Marie Morin who sings it herself.
The competition involves instrumental music as well with the traditional duet or couple bombarde and biniou and some accordion (diatonic) playing. Two tracks are devoted to the duet with bombarde and biniou with some marches from Redon and Josselin while two more tracks have dances played on the box.To be precise, these instrumental tracks were recorded much later but with the same musicians for technical reasons.

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Magyar Furulyások Erdélyben És Moldvában 

Hungarian flutes players in Transylvania and Moldavia

 Hungaroton, 1993, MK 18221

This is a copy on tape I got from a friend during the nineties. The original is a cassette published in the series called FonoFolk.

A very nice and interesting work under the direction of Juhász Zoltán himself a talented furulya player and piper who played with Muzsikás among others. 

As I don't have neither cover nor booklet here are the credits found on Discogs :

	Bálványosváralja (Unguras)
A1	Topán György	A Juhok Nótája
A2	Réti Imre	Keserű Víz, Nem Hittem, Hogy Édes Légy
A3	Topán György	Máma Péntek, Holnap Szombat
A4	Topán György	Kecskés
A5	Réti Imre, Topán György	Jaj, De Sokat Áztam, Fáztam, Fáradtam
	Magyarbece (Beta)
A6	Szántó Ferenc	Keserves
A7	Szántó Ferenc	Keserves
A8	Szántó Ferenc	Pontozó
A9	Szántó Ferenc	Keserves És Lassú
	Magyarszovát (Suatu)
A10	Csete Árpád	Két Lassú
A11	Csete Árpád	Összerázás
	Szék (Sic)
A12	Székely József	Lassú
A13	Székely József	Csárdás És Magyar
	Klézse (Cleja)
B1	Farkas Demeter	Tilinka-Szózat
B2	László András	Öreg (Lapos) Magyaros
B3	László András	Magyaros
B4	László András	Édes Gergelem Éneke
B5	László István	Édes Gergelem Tánca
B6	Legedi László István	Románca
	Székelyszentmihály (Mihaileni)
B7	András József	Két Keserves
B8	András József	Kétlépésű Csárdás
B9	András József	Egylépésű Csárdás
B10	András József	Marosszéki
	Gyimesbükk (Ghimes Faget), Hidegség (Valea Rece)
B11	Tímár Viktor	Kettős És Sirüleje
B12	Karácsony Gergely, Karácsony Lázár	Csárdás
B13	Tímár Viktor	A Bábáé Recorder – Tímár Viktor Ütőgardon – Tímár János
B14	Karácsony Lázár	Keserves
B15	Tímár Viktor	Lassú És Sebes Magyaros Recorder – Tímár Viktor Ütőgardon – Tímár János

		Collections of Zoltán Juhász, Róbert Kerényi, Iván Nesztor, Ferenc Pásztor, Kálmán Sáringer. The most beautiful melodies of Transylvanian and Moldavian Hungarian flutists - shepherds, farmers - are played on this selection. Good flute playing is not rare in these regions, so it is here that the ornamental, varied and improvisatory formal culture of instrument playing has survived in its richest state. Flute playing has common and regionally different characteristics, just like singing folk music or dialects: the flutists of the Székely, Székely or Moldavian Csángó regions form the melody and handle their instruments differently. The recordings are made in the musicians' homes or out in the fields and pastures, so you can sometimes hear the birds singing, the sheep barking, the shepherds talking, the dancers tapping their feet. All the flute types used by Transylvanian and Moldavian flutists can be heard on the cassette. The most common is the six-holed, plugged flute (the Moldavian Csángó call this instrument 'sültü', or 'whistle', in old Hungarian). It is this tachnika that gives the Transylvanian flute its rich and variable timbre. And the throaty accompaniment adds even more colour to the sound. Today, tilinka is only used by the Moldavian Csángó. Its whistle construction is unique: it has a wind splitting hole, but the musician replaces the plug with his own tongue. (Another type is even simpler: the sound is made by blowing on the sharp edge of the empty tube.) The tilinka has no holes, the sound is made by the overtone of the open and closed whistle. The twin flute is a single instrument consisting of two flutes carved from wood side by side. One branch has six holes, just like the normal flute, while the other has no holes, like the tilinka. Thus the overtone of this second branch provides the notes to accompany the melody. The kaval is 60 to 80 cm long, with five holes and a special series of notes. Its whistle has a plug mechanism exactly like that of the ordinary flute. The kaval is used by the Moldavian Csángó, who probably adopted it under Romanian influence. Zoltán Juhász Note that on my copy tracks A10 and A11 are one track; the same for B1 and B2, B9 and B10
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Poringé

 

PORINGÉ FOLKLORO ANSAMBLIS

Melodiya, 1989, S30 28705 004

This band is part of the Vilnius Educational Institute under the direction of Mrs Marija Baltréniené. All the members were young people mostly singers. As the ''title'' shows this Institute was intended to allow younger generations to know and assimilate what was left of the Lithuanian musical  tradition. There is now another group by the name of Poringés which ''took over'' the old one.
This album is largely dedicated to singing as side B shows. Female group singing (dainuoja mergaitès) is the most important, then male group singing (dainuoja visi) and finally mixed group singing. All these songs come from the area around Varèna.
On side A we can listen to some instrumental music with the skudučiai a set of tubes played individually by several people creating a kind of polyphony. Now one player might have up to three pipes tied together for himself but the playing is still the same.
Another typical instrument is the popular oboe called byrbiné with a single or a double reed once played by shepherds to control their herds.
But maybe the most popular instrument is the kanklès a zither related to the other Baltic zither and Russian gusli.
Some of the instrumental parts sound like European music from the 19th century but some seem pretty much older like sounds to accompany agricultural or forestry rituals. We must remember that the Baltic people were largely pagans as late as the 13th century which led to the invasion of the Teutonic Knights who had come to convert them by force.

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Viracocha

 

VIRACOCHA

LEGENDARY MUSIC OF THE ANDES

Lyrichord,  1974, LLST 7264

This is one of the albums Lyrichord didn't think necessary to include to its download site. This recording was made in the field by J.F. Sheppard in 1972 and 1973 in Peru. The presentation text gives some information about the history of the Incas but very little about the music itself.
It seems that some of the tracks were recorded during cultural events at Cuzco. There are bands of musicians with kena, guitare, violin, mandolin and harp as well as harp solo and an small pipe organ built by a Quechua farmer and tuned to the oldest organ in South America in Cuzco Cathedral.
Track A7 is a bit of a surprise with a Hopi hunting song; nothing is said about the presence of some Northern Indian singers but links between Andean and Native American people were part of a will to highlight the rich culture of the American aborigenes from the Bering Strait  to the Tierra del Fuego. A big feast and show called Inti Raymi is held every year in June to revive the Inca empire with historical reconstruction in the ancient capital of the empire. I suppose that some of the music was recorded there by Sheppard. 

 

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ГΕOPГИ ЧИЛИHГИPOB

 

ГΕOPГИ ЧИЛИHГИPOB И CTEФAH ЗAXMAHOB гaйдa

GEORGI CHILINGIROV and STEFAN ZAHMANOV bagpipe

Balkanton, 1978, VNA 10162

From the Rhodope region a nice duet with singer G. Chilingirov and bagpiper S. Zahmanov. The kabagajda is proper to the area and gives this music a special flavour. Zahmanov was considered as a master  who was part of every important musical events. He plays four solos including his famous ''svornato horo'' that he recorded several times.
Chilingirov has a nice voice  and sings in the traditional manner.
Texts in Bulgarian and English. 

 

Available at : https://www.deezer.com/en/album/273370122

 

Los Incas 71

 

LOS INCAS 71

Festival, 1971, FLDX 517

One of the oldest latino-american bands in Europe, Los Incas was created by Jorge Milchberg aka "El Inca" in 1956 along with fellow Argentinians Ricardo Galeazzi and Carlos Benn-Pott.
They were quite prolific in the sixties and seventies when ''latino'' genre was fashionable in France in particular.
Their approach to South-American music was both locally rooted and reworked. They used some field recordings published by Folkways for example in the forties and fifties but with some arragements, nice ones most of the time. They composed a lot as well. Here each track is attributed to El Inca (except for one to Benn-Pott) but I believe he put his signature as an arranger mostly. Either compositions or traditional all the tunes are quite nice.

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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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musique non écrite

 

MUSIQUE NON ECRITE - FOLK -

NON WRITTEN MUSIC

Expression Spontanée, 1976, ES 35

The man behind this album is Gérard Dôle who was one of the pioners of the French folk revival. He was one of the first French musicians to go to Louisiana and meet some of the big names of Cajun music such as the Balfa Brothers. Dôle has been playing Cajun music on the melodeon for decades. At the time of the release of this album he had already produced three Cajun albums in France.
This album is a kind of manifesto; the title ''musique non écrite'' was an expression to name something that was not classical music. He says on the back cover that these three words had the power to get on professors' nerves in conservatories who coudln't understand how one could play without reading a score of music. This is still now the position of some of them. By calling popular music ''non written music'' was to bring French trad and other musical expressions onto the side of ethnic musics from Africa and elsewhere and out of the normal creation process through classical teaching.
For Dôle the main point in the revival was to tell people to pick up whatever instrument and try and do something with it the way they want.
Here we have some of the other pioneers of the French revival like Michel Hindenoch, Patrick Lemercier or Michel Legoubé. The majority of the tracks was recorded by Dôle in his flat in the center of Paris between 1975 and 1976. Two tracks were recorded live including Dewey and Rodney Balfa; one was recorded in Louisiana and another one in the street with a blind accordion player. Tunes and songs from Vendée, Lyonnais, Poitou or Morvan are part of the album along with some Cajun repertoire by French revivalists and Cajun singers.
The label Expression Spontanée (literally spontaneous expression) was a left-wing friendly label founded by Jean Bériac in 1968

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CAMOДEЯTEЛЬHOE ИCKУCCTBO HAPOДHOCTEЙ CEBEPA

 

CAMOДEЯTEЛЬHOE ИCKУCCTBO HAPOДHOCTEЙ CEBEPA

THE ART OF THE AMATEUR GROUPS OF NORTHERN NATIVE PEOPLE

Melodiya, 1983, S 9019759-007

This is another of those albums I could borrow from the Soviet Cultural Center in Paris around 1986. At that time I didn't think necessary to copy the front cover but thanks to Leonidas here it is as well as the text in Russian.
These amateur groups are like national groups for different small people like the Evenks, the Saami, the Nenets or the Khantys. They are organised as folk ensembles performing on stages but they are still a reflection of traditional cultures that have been endangered since the time of the Russian colonization.

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Muhammad Jum'ah Khan

 

This is a copy of a commercial tape by the great singer and ud player Muhammad Jum'ah Khan. Born in 1903, perhaps, he mastered different styles of Yemeni singing. He was from a region called Hadramawt in the east but could sing in other styles like those of Sana'a, Lahji or Yaf'i. He died in 1962 but he is still highly venerated according to the Yemen Times where I found the following : 

He learnt the basics of reading and writing in the local madrasa and was distinguished by his voice. He was apt for reciting verses from the Holy Quraan and poetic verses and he was among the pupils who were usually performing on public occasions.

When he was fifteen, he joined the Sultanate brass band, led by an Indian and he remained a member of it until he was 29. He got promotions while he was there as he could successfully play various types of musical instruments and excelled particularly in playing qanbous and oud. Ultimately he was appointed a leader of the band.

Mohammed Jum'ah Khan formed his own band when he retired from the Sultan band. He took up singing as a profession. His first appearance with the band was in a solo performance playing oud and tambourine. Later, his fame grew and spread over Arabia and Africa.

He sang for different producers using verses from the poetic collections of many great Arab literary figures such as Basharah al-Khawri, Zuhair bin Abi Salma and Antarah bin Shaddad. Khan could reach the hearts of the people through his mastery over the art of signing and his identification with the versifier.

Of the testimonies made in his favor is that of late Farid al-Atrash, famous Egyptian singer, who, when listening to the audio recording of the performance of Khan with his band, praised him and could hardly believe that the band consisted of only four members.

This tape besides Jum'ah Khan features an anonymous (for me) violin player, an instrument rare enough in Yemen it seems, and a percussion player. So it's an example of Yemeni music at its best.

There are no titles; I got the tape from a friend who lived in Yemen for a while.

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Paddy O'Brien from Tipperary

 

PADDY O'BRIEN (1922-1991)

As a musician and trad music lover I was lucky to meet other musicians and collect from some of them tapes of all sorts of music.
Here is a tape about the great Irish box player Paddy O'Brien from Nenagh (county Tipperary). I think it was made during a session when O'Brien was then in Garrykennedy on the shores of Lough Derg. It's difficult to know when exactly that session was held but it could be during the seventies. There are several fiddlers and a piano with Paddy in the front leading the session; they play together all the time except for one set of reels by Paddy and the piano. Lots of reesls of course with some jigs and one set of slip jigs, two sets of hornpipes and one march. Paddy O'Brien was not only a brillant box player (G/C#) but also a very prolific composer. In fact many of his tunes have been played ever since where Irish music is played. These tunes are considered traditional now and often musicians don't know about the origin of these tunes.
This is a copy of a copy I suppose but the quality is not that bad and the music is just great.

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Moravian Folk Songs

 

Ej, Brode, Brodečku

MORAVIAN FOLK SONGS

LUBOMÍR MÁLEK

BRNĚNSKÝ ROZHLASOVÝ ORCHESTR LIDOVÝ CH NÁSTROJŮ

BRNO RADIO FOLK INSTRUMENT ENSEMBLE

Supraphon, 1988, 11 0059-1

A typical album of Moravian folklore with the singer L. Málek from the region of Uherský Brod. Moravia is part of the Czech Republic bordering with Slovakia. There was a certain Hungarian influence on the local music with violins and hammered dulcimer I suppose brought initially by Gypsy musicians. Uherský means Hungarian in Czech. All the songs are from the same area.
Texts in Czech and English

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Binali Selman

 

BINALI SELMAN 1

Harika, no date, 58

Binali Selman was a well known Turkish  zurna player. He was born in 1931 in Bayburt and started his musical career in 1954 after winning a competition organized by Radio Istanbul. He could play all sorts of tradtional instruments including the ney. He had been part of the folk orchestra in Radio Istanbul for thirty years. He worked with big names of Turkish folk/pop scene like Cem Karaca, Barış Manço and Okay Temiz. During the eighties he was awarded the title of world champion zurna player in India. He died in 1996.
This tape is one of many tapes and LPs he recorded; Some of the tunes are availbale on different albums. Seven tracks are mentionned on the cover but there are eight tunes on side A. Side B has nine tracks supposedly but there are eight tracks really. Hope you can find out by yourself what is what.
The davul player is anonymous.

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