C'houez er Beuz by Polig Monjarret, Editions B.A.S., 1953
11/03/2025
C’Houez er Beuz (Blow into the Wood) is an early and exceedingly rare, long out-of-print musical score book for bombard and biniou by Polig Monjarret, the founder of the B.A.S. or Bodadeg Ar Sonerion (Brotherhood of Musicians).
Published in 1953, this book is one of the first of its kind by an author and organization whose importance to Breton culture and identity cannot be overstated. As such, it forms one of the germinal seeds of the B.A.S. and its development of Breton music.
To download the PDF book, click on the cover image to the right.
One fascinating detail of the book is a Forward by the noted author Per Jakez Helias, well known for his lovely book The Horse of Pride. A translated excerpt follows:
Back in the day, the biniou and bombard were deemed evil. In the village pulpits the preachers thundered fulminating vituperations and consigned the bards to the infernal flames. Nothing worked. Now they're lecturing us about the horrors of jazz! We've heard better.
Besides, the two traditional instruments were not just for dancing. They released other emotions. They knew how to lament shipwrecks and play love songs, they commanded the flowery crews of the wedding by sounding the bridal steps, and the “great air of the horses”. “Make us cry, now!” we demanded of the talabarder. As they passed by the dinner table we would cry “Open our stomachs!”and they sounded the air for the mealtime roast. Everywhere and for anything, when the talabarder was there, we begged, we ordered, we vociferized in all the tones: “C’houez ar beuz!" Blow in the boxwood!
Our master musicians were more than ordinators of noisy rejoicing. Good workers first of all, and this merit was a very sensitive topic to our fathers who prized a solid work ethic. Having recognized since childhood the possibilities of their instruments, the musicians continued to their dying day searching to express more.
One of their main concerns was the maintenance of the biniou’s bag and its perfect air-seal, for which they were willing to try the most bizarre concoctions. Secret formulas, tightly guarded! But the bombard’s reeds, above all else, were the object of the greatest obsession. We speak of bombard reeds, precious and inaccessible treasures, in boiled cow horn, stretched and put in slats, patiently prepared with the grindstone and then kept in a bath of ‘lambig’ cider brandy. This goes well beyond simple professional integrity. What was it about the cane reeds, that they could only be valid if they had been cut at night, at a certain phase of the moon, and between the third and fourth knots of the stem, in a field of such exposure and sown only at a certain time! A whiff of witchcraft, perhaps, but above all a belief in the supreme value of the music and the craft. Because these musicians had succumbed to the tyranny of inspiration. They knew themselves to be musicians from a very young age, and were driven as though by a shepherd or cowherd to make the leaves and grasses sing, to blow into the reeds.
A talabarder’s favorite bombard was a real “Stradivarius”. Most often, it accompanied the musician to the grave. At the hospice in Carhaix, old Leon Bras slept with his oboe on his heart. What a job to accustom the big fingers to beat the boxwood in sensitive time, to discipline the breath, master and measure the articulations of the tongue. The reward came to the talabarder when it was no longer possible for anyone to confuse his style with that of anyone else. Hearing a bombard play in the distance, the peasant raised his back in his field and could say, without risk of error: “It is Matilin! It Is Le Dorig!” At that point the instrumentalist had become a creator, that is to say, without any knowledge of music theory, he improvised on new melodies that sang in his head, and to personal versions of familiar old tunes that he never played without putting his own touches into. Everyone afterwards then played “his” gavotte, “his” Bal, “his” jabadao or “his” march that eventually bore his name or the name of his home town. That’s why the seven winds scattered thousands of tunes across Brittany that survived long past the last sigh of their creators. The merit of Polig Monjarret and his friends in the B.A.S. was to diligently seek out these scattered compositions, to capture in written form the lazy but tenacious memories of the elderly.
Polig Monjarret (left) and Dorig Le Voyer, early pivotal figures in the B.A.S.
