Music Articles…

Coop Breizh to spin off unprofitable music business…

Coop Breizh is perhaps the most important seller and creator of specifically Breton recordings, as well as books and numerous other items. Though the article is titled Coop Breizh Turns Up the Sound, the gist of it is that following the covid era, the musical aspect of the beloved cooperative - making and distributing CDs - has faded in financial performance and left debt load on the business. 

Founded in 1957, the emergence of CD production and sales by the Coop in the 1980s boosted the importance of musical activity up to a 50/50 split with books and other merchandise the coop produces and/or retails. The emergence of first digital piracy, and more recently and much more importantly, streaming services such as Spotify, here referred to as outils numériques (digital tools), have eroded the ability of the business to continue to make and sell recordings. 

This is, of course, the same story heard around the world, as exploitative streaming platforms suck up all the cash that otherwise would go to musicians and producers. 

Could streaming services quash the broad ability of musicians to make and record their art at a high level? Yes, quite possibly. 

The article states that the percent split in sales between books and other merchandise versus music has now shifted to 90/10. The Coop is responding to this unfortunate reality by spinning off the highly respected music aspect into an associated  but independent entity,  almost certainly to protect the parent company from incurring further destabilizing debt.  One can only hope that they have success in this effort and can maintain some degree of the musical production that has been central to the entire genre of Breton music, the livelihoods of countless musicians, and the listening pleasure of innumerable fans the world over.

~ Fañch

Accordéons en Bretagne, by Yves Rouillard, Hengoun Editions, 2005 

11/26/2023

Accordéons en Bretagne is a big, hardcover book of decades of black-and-white photography of ordinary accordionists in Brittany by Yves Rouillard. If you love accordion (which I do) you may certainly find this lovely book a worthwhile purchase.  Below are some images from the book - click on each one to open a ‘lightbox’ popup to see the image in greater detail.

~ Fañch

Fest-Noz, festive gathering based on the collective practice of traditional dances of Brittany

Inscribed in 2012 (Seventh Session of the Intergovernmental Committee) on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

Fest-Noz is a festive gathering based on the collective practice of traditional Breton dances, accompanied by singing or instrumental music. The strong Breton cultural movement has preserved this expression of a living and constantly renewed practice of inherited dance repertoires with several hundred variations, and thousands of tunes. About a thousand Fest-Noz take place every year with participants varying from a hundred to several thousand people, thousands of musicians and singers and tens of thousands of regular dancers. Beyond the practice of the dance, the Fest-Noz is characterized by an intense camaraderie among the singers, musicians and dancers, significant social and intergenerational diversity, and openness to others. Traditionally, transmission occurs through immersion, observation and imitation, although hundreds of devotees have worked with tradition bearers to compile the repertoires and lay the groundwork for new modes of transmission. Today, the Fest-Noz is at the centre of an intense ferment of musical experiences and has spawned a veritable cultural economy. Many meetings are held between singers, musicians and dancers from Brittany and different cultures. Moreover, many new inhabitants of Breton villages use Fest-Noz as a means of integration, as it is heavily implicated in the sense of identity and continuity of the people of Brittany.

“The Day I Felt Breton”  

A star of the Breton music scene, Erik Marchand remembers a stay in Romania in the early 1990s, a journey which became, for him, a revelation.

I am a musician. I am also a traveler. 

For more than forty years, I have regularly traveled to Eastern Europe and in particular to Romania, a fascinating country that I consider my second home. I went there several times since the 1980s, whether for personal or humanitarian reasons. But if I found myself in Romania, in the winter of 1990, even though the revolution had just ended and Ceaușescu had been executed, it was above all as the promoter of a festival that I had just co-created in Glomel, in Côtes-d'Armor (Brittany): La Recontre Internationale de la Clarinette Populaire. 

For the upcoming edition, I decided to bring back a taragot, a sort of wooden saxophone quite common in Romania, and incorporate it into an ensemble in central Brittany. This quest took me from one city to another. One afternoon in January I walked, alone, across a town called Brebu. By the greatest of coincidences, that day, in this village completely covered by snow, there was a ruga. A ruga is the exact equivalent of a Pardon in Brittany: a religious celebration followed by a dance party. 

When I arrived, I saw musicians - saxophonists, trumpeters, accordionists, singers - heading to the village hall. I listened and decided to follow them. Once in the hall, I got a strange feeling! The same neon lights and same colors on the ceiling: this place was an almost identical reproduction of the village hall at home, in Poullaouen, which I frequented so much! The dances followed one another and, just like in a Fest Noz, all social classes were mixed there. All ages were equally represented. Of course, I also noticed some differences - in a ruga the dancers move in the opposite direction than they do in a Fest Noz - but I still had this curious and pleasant impression of feeling at home.

Deep inside, something quite incredible was happening. I was 35 years old and, in the heart of Romania, one of the great forgotten countries of the political and economic revolutions of the end of the 20th century, I found the same popular élan as at home in Brittany! This Brittany which has not been forgotten and which, however, has intelligently managed to maintain this same popular culture! That day, finally, in that Brebu village hall, I suddenly became aware of one thing: I felt Breton. I felt like a Breton because I felt like I belonged to a popular culture that can and knows how to go beyond its own borders. As for the taragot that I came to look for, I ended up finding one. The day after this memorable day in Brebu, which acted as such a revelation, a friend found one for me.

This article was translated by me from a recent article from BRETONS magazine, pictured above right. 

~ Fañch