02/28/2004
Following is an interview we did not write, but translated from the indispensable magazine Musique Bretonne, published of course by Dastum. The interview comes from issue 165, from 2001. Due to a problem with the printing, we can’t make out who did the original interview.
With significant and notable contributions to several musical projects, and now Sans-sommeil, the Régis Huiban Quartet's first CD: this is the first culmination of a rather atypical musical journey in the Breton musical world... Meet Régis Huiban.
At the age of nine, I started playing the chromatic accordion at the Jégado music school in Quimperlé. I learned the entire musette repertoire to play at dances. It wasn't until high school that I met people who introduced me to Breton music, like Julien Le Mentec, with whom I started the group Tan B'an Ty.
How did the combination of initial, solid "classical" accordion training and the discovery of Breton music come about?
It was first and foremost an opportunity to do something other than dances and Sunday afternoon tea dances almost every weekend. I then went further in the discovery of Breton music, and also dance, in leading dance rehearsals at Le Faouët, and of course in Fest Noz, particularly playing with Tan B'an Ty. But I still had much to discover because, until then, it was mainly through group playing that I had approached Breton music.
It was a little later that I became interested in the bombard; I took lessons with Josick Allot and with him I discovered the repertoire of sounds and songs. It was at that time that I had to gradually make the distinction between traditional music and arranged music, and define what space I had left for my own personal composition. But gradually, it was no longer enough for me to do only Fest Noz. It was in 1997 that I met Roland Becker. We started working together on projects Kof a Kof and Mr. Kerbec and His Belouzes. It was an opening for me: from a concert perspective, I was doing something other than dance music. This interested me even more because Roland is also very open to jazz. With him and the Belouzes musicians, I discovered American jazz standards and more complex harmonies.
In 1999, Tan B'an Ty was reunited around Noluen Le Buhé with a guitarist who had already been playing jazz for a long time, Philippe Gloaguen. The goal was to do both concerts and Fest Noz. It was another evolution from what I was doing with Roland; I went further with Philippe in terms of harmony and improvisation. Little by little, I became passionate about both jazz and traditional music, such as the music of the sonneurs. And my most recent project is the quartet. I wasn’t content just playing jazz standards like everyone else, but wanted to offer music drawn from tradition, closer to me: drawing inspiration, for example, from a gwerz, then expanding on the theme, or even composing a tune from a fragment of a gavotte, for example.
Do you see the quartet as part of a jazz tradition that has long been inspired by traditional popular themes?
Initially, big band music was intended for dancing, but many musicians wanted to express themselves as soloists, so they formed quartets, quintets, etc., for the pleasure of improvising. This is still true today. In the quartet, there is Philippe Gloaguen on guitar and Loïc Larnicol on drums - these two have known each other for a long time, playing jazz in the same band. Julien Le Mentec is on double bass; he, like me, has a background in dance music, whether at dance halls or Fest Noz. We composed a lot, always drawing inspiration from traditional tunes, and, like a jazz quartet, we present a theme and improvise. There are also some personal compositions, where we express a particular universe, where I sometimes mix the human voice, my own, with that of the accordion. It's not that I have a vocation as a singer, but it was a challenge for me to sing a few choruses, in the spirit of sonic exploration.
From popular accordion to jazz, via traditional music, was this a seamless journey?
Yes, because in a way, the common thread running through this journey was Yves Menez, and it still is. He was an accordionist from the 1930s. When he lived in Paris, he learned the accordion and played at dance halls. And when he returned to Brittany, he started playing the gavotte in a Gus Viseur style, a "swing gypsy musette" style. Whether with Roland Becker, with Tan B'an Ty or with the quartet, 70 years later we still draw a lot of inspiration from them, like many other musicians who interpret his gavottes today.
This man marked an epoch in Breton music. He taught many other accordionists. Always Breton music and dances because at that time, if we had adopted the instrument, we also wanted to adopt the repertoire that went with it. We wanted to dance the java and the waltz - alongside the gavotte and the ridée. Yves Menez is undoubtedly one of the very first accordionists to have done this. He was undoubtedly requested at many weddings where he also played the gavotte.
The album we're releasing is the first part of a triptych we want to create in homage to Yves Menez. And not just to him, either: I'm including all the singers I had the opportunity to collect in Pays Pourlet just before 2000. Rather than having it stay tucked away in drawers, we draw a lot of inspiration from it to recompose Breton music: you need a foundation.
It was Jean-Michel Guilcher who said: "Tradition is memory and creation." As for jazz, I don't pretend to really play it; I consider myself to be in a constant state of learning.
So what is the music of this quartet?
Well, a slightly more personal kind of music. It's jazz insofar as there's improvisation, instruments like drums, Gibson (electric guitar), and double bass. It definitely gives it a jazz flavor. But when you recognize a few traditional tunes heard at the Kanar Bobl in a Fest Noz, you can't really say it's jazz.
It's difficult to define. As long as there's improvisation, you can say it's jazz, but there's so much other music where people improvise... The music to dance to at a Fest Noz is repetitive music, through which you seek a bit of a trance, but if you listen carefully, it's never the same phrase twice. Whether it's the bombard players or the singers, there are always developments, variations, ornamentations, and improvisations that are gradually added. We make the gavotte swing, it's true, but in some pieces, voice samples collected in Pays Pourlet were incorporated.
Because when I lived in Ploërdut, I noticed that my neighbor sang in Breton. So I recorded it, and she sang me her own standards from the Pays Pourlet, and the other singers I met in the area often knew the same tunes: this idea of local "hits" interested me enormously. From there, to present one of these themes—or just take a fragment—and harmonize it all in a quartet, work on the atmospheres, the cymbals, the walking bass lines, then yes, then we can talk about jazz. But if jazz is playing the standards, like in a jam session at a cabaret, then it's not really jazz. Our goal is above all to offer concert music, music to listen to, taking inspiration from the compositions of Yves Menez: a gavotte that swings, that can be danced with as much pleasure as if it were being played or sung.
To talk more about jazz, what era does the quartet draw inspiration from?
Most likely from the 1930s and 40s. Like in the duo Kof a Kof. On the other hand, I don't feel qualified to play bebop, progressive jazz, destructured as in later eras. We sometimes went so far with harmony that we ended up offering difficult, sometimes indigestible music.
So, how is the quartet's music received by different audiences—not really jazz, it seems, for jazz lovers, and not really traditional for others?
Actually, we already have some experience in this area. For example, we were booked at the Quimper Aprem'Jazz: when we spoke to the audience about the singers from our countryside and the people who had inspired us, we found that they were not indifferent to this approach. At the same time, when we were invited to the Printemps de Châteauneuf, where the audience did not particularly expect to hear these sounds or the the improvisation, we felt that they responded well to the interchanges between the guitar and the accordion, the returns to the theme, and then the departures into improvisation.
Personally, I like music without labels, that isn't categorized. People, unfortunately, need that all the time. In saying this, I'm thinking, for example, of Hadji-Lazaro: he's sometimes categorized as punk, or rock, and then he arrives on stage with a hurdy-gurdy, a diatonic (accordion), and a bagpipe! For me, it's world music; you have to let yourself go.
Can the jazz flavors you give your music give you access to audiences other than traditional music?
We've already had the opportunity to play in places where no one knows Breton music, except perhaps through Stivell or Tri Yann. We discovered by talking with people that they were very sensitive to what we played. They liked it without really being able to explain why. So far, we've met a nice range of audiences, from those most into jazz or traditional music, to people who simply love music, or even all music, and it seems to be working. Okay, I'll stop, otherwise people will think we've only received compliments!
Can you make a living off of concerts?
Demand in Brittany isn't strong for Breton music concerts. Festival programmers are nevertheless very busy. Artists from Brittany may ask themselves the following question: do they have to come from far away to offer concerts? I continue to play at Fest Noz with Tan B'an Ty, in a duo with Noluen Le Buhé, at Fest Noz, and in concerts with Roland Becker. It's up to us to vary the stage opportunities. In any case, I still love to play Fest Noz, but perhaps less in a group than as a soloist: I always get great pleasure from playing a gavotte on the accordion at a Fest Noz, all by myself.
The quartet refers to jazz from the 1930s and 1940s. Is there currently a tendency in Brittany to place music in a specific historical context?
I was greatly influenced by Roland Becker, who has long placed his albums in historical time, and he helped me a lot. Before the work we did together on Kof a Kof or M. Kerbec and His Belouzes, I played Breton music without thinking about it, without really having an opinion, without asking myself where it came from. It was he who introduced me to listening to singers and sonneurs, to meeting elders, and to historical perspective. Now, I'm less in a spirit of exclusive reference to the past than in a process of recognition: I learned from elders, I want to talk about it to others, to pass something on to them.
What are some things that have particularly influenced your musical career?
I can think of three. First, Jo Jégado, who taught me the accordion when I was a kid. At that age, your parents force you to take music lessons, but you don't know if you really want to do it. He introduced me to dance music. It was almost a necessary step for me, a "musette accordion" period that I don't necessarily disparage. We too often associate the instrument with the Tour de France - Yvette Horner is a great musician, by the way - and with cheesy dances. But the musette repertoire is interesting. The second is undoubtedly Roland Becker, because I learned a lot from this musician; and the third is certainly Daniel Mille, whom I met during a jazz workshop in Paris at the Arpej school, and who currently accompanies Jean-Louis Trintignant. Definitely a strong influence!
What direction could we take today to build Breton music for the next ten years?
That's a really difficult question. I don't know what Breton music will be like in ten years; it all depends on the musicians and their creative ability. Already today, we hear beautiful things, I'm thinking in particular of Bugel Koar. Marthe Vassallo composes, creates her own lyrics, and sings in Breton. Philippe Ollivier accompanies her on the bandoneon and accordion. Their world on stage owes nothing to anyone.
Furthermore, I want to encourage musicians to really work on their music, to listen to all kinds of music, because overall, we're pretty closed in our own world: when we go to FIL (Festival Interceltique de Lorient), we too often see the same faces, and this is also true from one festival to the next. Of the number of musicians who play in Bagads, how many have been to Dastum? How many listen to anything else? I would like the leaders of these groups to encourage their musicians to listen not only to pairs of sonneurs or singers, but to other musical genres, to push them to compose, to be daring. For me, if we succeed in the future in Breton music, it will be in the search for trance. Traditional music is essentially drone music, trance music in a key, major or minor.
When you listen to a bagpipe-bombard pairing and the drone stops, there's immediately something missing. However, most Bagadoù, whether in groups or otherwise, will present a tune, sometimes with a complex, even twisted arrangement, and then immediately move on to something else, including everything they know, forgetting the essentials. As a result, you no longer vibrate: you perceive so much information, and in all keys, that it's annoying.
Isn't your quartet's music already a little too "intellectual" to lead to this trance?
By intellectual music, we can mean music for musicians, or experimental music. The quartet's music is popular and invites us to escape. The improvisation and the dialogue between instrumentalists can sometimes unsettle the listener. But, on stage as on the album (Sans-sommeil), each musician gives the best of themselves, finding the balance between raising awareness in the audience and exploring themselves.
Personally, I like listening to a concert, letting myself be carried away, without falling into the trap of analyzing it to form a judgment. We want to invite people to close their eyes and take the music as it comes.
~ Fañch
