Skolvan: 40 Years!

At the end of 2023 some of the members of Skolvan began releasing an incredibly charming series of new photographs on social media, in celebration of the group’s 40th anniversary, and several interviews and newspaper articles appeared in the French press. A 40th anniversary tour, with select younger musicians as special guests, was announced.  We thought this was a great opportunity to do a Skolvan overview, with the basic history of the group, a ranking of their recordings and translating the ’Skolvan, 40 ans de scène !’ interview of guitarist Gilles Le Bigot by Laetitia Lemoine on tamm-kreiz.com. 

Just by themselves the classic first and second recordings by this group, Musique à Danser and especially  Kerz Ba’n Dans, their finest recording, place Skolvan at the eternal forefront of this genre.  As a young listener I both fell in love with Breton music and was inspired to play woodwinds, in large part, by these two recordings, to give you some idea of their impact. 

1) A History

The group was created in 1984 by three teachers of the traditional music conservatory of Ploemeur: Youenn Le Bihan on bombard and “Pistoñ” ( a bombard/baroque oboe hybrid of his own making), Patrice Querré on violin, and Yann-Fañch Perroches on accordion. Perroches invited guitarist Gilles Le Bigot to join and the group was born.

In 1987, Patrice Querré, who also played with Alan Stivell, passed the bow over to Fañch Landreau. Thus was formed the classic formation of Skolvan that would leave its musical mark for around ten years in Brittany, France, and around the world, on stage and on record. 1989 saw their first release on the Adipho label. Musique à Danser was released only on cassette and suffers from some production limitations by modern standards, but was a staggeringly impressive and gorgeous piece of work nonetheless. Next came their first recording on the prestigious Keltia Musique label in 1991, Kerzh Ba'n' Dañs (Come to the Dance), which stands as the group’s finest achievement and one of the seminal recordings of Breton music. 1994’s Swing & Tears saw a number of guest performers bring an expanded palette of sounds for a recording that, although it lacked the shear intensity of its predecessor, showed substantial charm and a swingier rhythmic feel.

After Swing & Tears there was a creative drought for the band, with a lack of new development and little recording activity. Yann-Fañch Perroches expressed frustration with this state of affairs, which culminated in 1997 with Le Bihan bringing saxophonist Bernard Le Dreau in to essentially supplant Landreau, who left  shortly after. Perroches was soon to follow, expressing publicly his extreme unhappiness with leaving the band he founded. “1999: I left Skolvan... with great regret :-(   It was a painful separation,” Perroches admitted, “but this new freedom allowed me to have many musical experiences.” Perroches and Landreau began performing as a duo. Perroches’ website stated, “Former co-conspirators in the famous group Skolvan, Fañch and Yann-Fañch are back together again in a hell-raising duo! Be prepared to dance, to listen, to laugh and to be moved!”

What happened next was an extremely interesting bifurcation where within roughly the same timeframe one half of the original band, Perroches and Landreau, would release the timeless, classic recording Daou ha Daou in 2000, also on Keltia Musique, while Le Bihan would reformulate Skolvan into a quintet, adding young accordionist Loig Troël and percussionist Dom Molard, the youngest of the three famous Molard brothers.

The subsequent recordings of this new lineup are to varying degrees rather less successful than the classic era, as Perroches and Landreau ultimately proved to be truly irreplaceable. In 2000, Chenchet'n eus an amzer (The times are changing) presented the musical direction of this new iteration  with a somewhat light-jazz sensibility bolstered by the energetic world-percussion feel of Molard. Juxtaposing this recording against Daou ha Daou shows a stark divergence. The second outing was the 2004 double live recording Live in Italia which presented the new lineup’s renditions of some classic material as well as new pieces such as an uptempo, Bretonified version of  the jazz standard Favorite Things. Italia would prove to be the last recording of this version of the group, which seemed to be running short on inspiration.

To this writer’s surprise and delight, 2010 saw yet another iteration of the band emerge with C'Hoari Pevar (Four Play) with one of Brittany’s most talented chromatic accordion players, Régis Huiban, joining the band as Troël and Molard departed. Huiban, who had been (relayed to me via personal correspondence on social media) a fan of the group in his youth, seized on the opportunity to play with his heroes. As a musician he was an excellent replacement for Perroches, and as a writer he brought fresh ideas and material to a band that had seen its heyday. Pevar therefore stands as a surprise turnaround for Skolvan, one of its most intriguing releases after more than a decade of only modestly successful efforts.

2018 marked the new Skolvan’s second recording, Ti ar seven, now on the Coop Breizh label as Keltia Musique had since succumbed to the headwinds battering the recording industry. For our review of Ti ar seven click HERE. In summary - it is a pleasant but not earth-shaking excursion, released simultaneously with an obviously superior work by Huiban’s other group, Wipidoup. Which brings us up to the present and the excitement surrounding the 40 Years of Skolvan! celebration.

2) The Recordings:

Skolvan recordings (not including compilation appearances) in chronological order:

1989 : Musique à danser (Adipho)

1991 : Kerzh Ba'n' Dañs (Keltia Musique)

1994 : Swing & Tears (Keltia Musique)

2000 : Daou ha Daou (Perroches & Landreau, Keltia Musique)

2000 : Cheñchet n'eus an amzer - Les temps changent (Keltia Musique)

2004 : Live in Italia (2CD, Keltia Musique)

2010 : C'Hoari Pevar (Keltia Musique)

2018 : Ti ar seven (Coop Breizh)

Entirely subjective of course, recordings listed in ranked order according to quality:

1991 : Kerzh Ba'n' Dañs (Keltia Musique)

2000 : Daou ha Daou (Perroches & Landreau, Keltia Musique) 

2010 : C'Hoari Pevar (Keltia Musique)

1989 : Musique à danser (Adipho)

1994 : Swing & Tears (Keltia Musique)

2018 : Ti ar seven (Coop Breizh)

2000 : Cheñchet n'eus an amzer - Les temps changent (Keltia Musique)

2004 : Live in Italia (2CD, Keltia Musique)

“Breton culture is now part of our landscape and it will not disappear thanks to all the activists, the sympathizers, all the people who are no longer ashamed to say that they are Breton, that they speak Breton, that they listen to Breton music. The future is now in the hands of the younger generation.”

3) The Interview

’Skolvan, 40 ans de scène !’ interview of guitarist Gilles Le Bigot by Laetitia Lemoine on tamm-kreiz.com. Translation: ours.

Skolvan is celebrating its 40th anniversary on stage in 2024, on this occasion Laetitia went to meet Gilles Le Bigot, guitarist of the group.

Q: Can you go back to the creation of the group and the former members of the group who shared the stages? 

A: The group was originally formed from three music teachers from what was then called the Regional Conservatory of Traditional Music and Dances of Lorient, which later became the Amzer Nevez cultural center. Youenn Le Bihan (bombard), Patrice Quérré (violin} and Yann Fanch Perroches (accordion), who invited me (guitar) to join. We played our first Fest Noz as a quartet at the Regional Conservatory on Saturday, April 14, 1984. The name 'SKOLVAN' was used for the first time a little later on, for a week-long tour in Galicia that September.

Q: What was the atmosphere of the Fest Noz of the time, the technical support…?

A: “The 1980s were what we call 'The trough of the wave'. I started playing in the scene in 1976, mainly in Haute Bretagne where we felt a stirring in particular with the arrival of young groups like GALORN or LA MIRLITANTOUILLE. You are right to associate atmosphere and sound systems because my first festivals used really very basic (Bouyer) sound systems. The first real sound systems for Fest Noz arrived at the end of the 70s with people like Michel Caous (who then created Eurolive) or Jean Claude Chidiac who arrived from Paris with a good head start. Once again, from my experience with the group GALORN, the rooms filled up when the sound became good. At the end of the 70s we had at least 1,000 entries at each Fest Noz in the Côtes d'Armor with a very young audience. It must be said that we freed ourselves from the rules specific to traditional dance music to make more modern music, closer to the folk music of the time (Planxty, Bothy Band and Malicorne).

Then the bellows fell and at the start of Skolvan in 1984 we played in front of 200 people maximum with an average age of over 40 years. The 80s were difficult but paradoxically very rich from a musical point of view. It was a laboratory of ideas with the decisive meeting between musicians from folk (like me) and musicians from traditional music (like Youenn Le Bihan). Apart from groups like SONERIEN DU (1971), DIAOULED AR MENEZ (1971) BLEIZI RUZ (1973) KANFARTED ROSTREN (1975) TAMMLES (1980) the 80s saw the emergence of numerous groups, some of which have left a lasting mark on the history of Breton music: GWERZ (1981) BARZAZ (1988) and in Fest Noz PENNOU SKOULM (1982) BF 15 (1983) SKOLVAN (1984) STORVAN (1984) CARRE MANCHOT (1986). Things improved significantly from the 1990s onwards.

At the start of SKOLVAN we quickly understood that we needed someone to accompany us with sound. An accordionist friend Michel Biard, passionate about Cajun music, provided us with sound during the first years with his little sound system made from odds and ends, but which achieved a more than honorable result. We stopped working with Michel when the venues became bigger, the audience wider and therefore the power insufficient.”

Q: A lot of things have changed since the creation of Skolvan. How do you explain the longevity of the project and this bond that unites you musicians and the public?

A: “The longevity of a group is linked to the success encountered over the years and to the friendship that is forged between the members of the group. In other words, meeting the public and good understanding within the group. Since the beginning of Skolvan, 9 musicians have been part of the group. Only Youenn Le Bihan and I have been there since the beginning. The arrival of Bernard Le Dreau in 1997 and Régis Huiban in 2009 reinforced the stability of the whole and the the pleasure of playing together remains intact every time. Respect for dance has been our common thread since the creation of the group. Our audience is made up of dancers who love Breton dance; their numerous testimonies tell us of the pleasure they have in dancing to our music.”

Q: In 40 years on stage, Skolvan has managed to maintain a sound specific to the group, recognizable among many others. At the beginning of the creation of Skolvan, what were the universes that inspired you, are they still the same today?

A: “Since the creation of Skolvan, it is the world of traditional sonneurs and singers who have inspired us. We have kept this line from the beginning and continue to draw inspiration from this extremely rich repertoire. We have always favored tunes, themes, melodic lines, the arrangements, then arrive according to inspiration and in this area, from the moment the base is solid, we can integrate multiple influences.”

Q: Do you have any new projects?

A: “We have started working on new compositions without a specific project yet. For the 40th anniversary tour we are going to revisit Skolvan's 'hits' and the project is also to invite young musicians to play with us on stage. At this point we cannot yet reveal their identity; the idea is to change depending on the location, favoring local musicians.”

Q: How do you see the future for Breton culture?

A: “This is a vast question, it is difficult to dissociate the future of Breton culture from the future of the world in general... If we ignore this last point, the observation is that Breton culture depends largely of the associative world, this is what makes our strength and our fragility at the same time. The Covid years have had a destructive impact on the associative world, many aging associations have closed their doors and I have the feeling that today we find ourselves in a certain way in the situation of the 80s… The big difference, and not the least, is that our music interests more and more young musicians with an excellent musical level. Breton culture is now part of our landscape and it will not disappear thanks to all the activists, the sympathizers, all the people who are no longer ashamed to say that they are Breton, that they speak Breton, that they listen to Breton music. The future is now in the hands of the younger generation.”

Q: What is your best memory(ies) from your 40 years on stage?

A: “It's difficult to extract a few good memories because there are so many of them. Among the most curious there is this concert by Skolvan in 1994 on the roof of the Montparnasse tower. One of the most notable is the concert in Milan at the Teatro Picollo in 2002 with a Jazz Band of 20 musicians. Our best memories will remain the many moments spent at Fest Noz in the company of the dancers and those magical moments where at the end of the piece we say to ourselves: 'There, something great happened', thank you to them!”

4) SKOLVAN today:

Régis HUIBAN: Chromatic accordion

Gilles LE BIGOT: Guitars

Youenn LE BIHAN: Bombarde, Piston

Bernard LE DREAU / Saxophone

~ Fañch

The whimsical 40th anniversary photos by Serj Philouse.