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Brittany’s Got Talent

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Mon dieu, there is so much to love about this clip. The collision of the joyful with the serious; the whoops of glee and the relentless stomp of feet off picture, while perfect upright poise maintains the loftiness of those titfers – the B52s in crisp linen and lace. The contrast of anachronistic costume despoiled by competition numbers, while weaving between are civilians with clipboards weighing each dancer for authenticity and style. The striding out at the start of each figure a la maniere de Cleese, while retaining a courtly air. Then, come off it, unless you’ve watched plenty of danses bretons sur l’YouTube (only me then), you will have been caught off guard when the camera pans to the musicians with very breton-sounding names. And ‘dieu encore’, do I love the music! The bombarde and the biniou – the perfect breton bedfellows – creating one of my favourite rackets. Harsh and harsher, tonality reaching across centuries, echoes from the music of other continents, yet this is a sound specific to the Armorican sphere.
This has put a spring in my step, if not a number on my back.

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Comments

  7. Hats off to you, Cheshire! You certainly know to get my ears and toes a tingling! A wonderful clip.

    It would have been superb by any standards but the numbers on the dancers’ backs and the young people walking among them with clipboards are a very bizarre addition.

    A quick glance at the comments and wiki informs me that this is a election process for War’l Leur- “a confederacy of Celtic circles established in 1967.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War%27l_Leur

    I googled and discovered that when War’l Leur was 50 years old they created this splendid dance spectacle to celebrate. It’s a treat! All the locals togged up and having a ball And the flirtatious looks among those dancers!

    I grew up in Pinner. There must have been Pinner Pagans at one time, but by the time we moved there, they had all been driven away.

    No bombardes and binious for me! My teenage years were sadly lacking in magnificent Breton bedfellows.

    All that was left were Dennis Wheatley’s novels in Pinner Library and Hammer horror films at the ABC cinema.

    Luckily there are still some places in the UK where there is a similar joyous celebration of ancient traditions. And here at the AW, we have enthusiasts like Cheshire and Hubert Rawlinson to help keep our fingers on the throbbing, gnarly pulse of Wicker England.

  8. Chas! (sans Dave.) As long as this sort of magnificent carry-on, er, carries on on the Celtic fringe, everything will be all right.

    (Spoiler alert) Some of this nonsense may not be entirely Cornish…

    • One year at Sidmouth – the year when ‘everyone’ died – Earlsdon Morris from Coventry did a, literally, spectacular display to the setting of Bowie’s Let’s Dance. The dancers were dressed in the many guises of Bowie down the ages. One for @dave_amitri ‘s researches!

  9. Those two excellent Breton gavotte clips are from the YTube channel of Tristan Gloaguen which is full of top notch clips of both songs and dances.

    Who is he? Directeur de la Confédération War’l Leur . So it’s scarcely surprising that he’s doing such a fine job.

    Here he is going through a comic Breton song with a lady called Louise Ebrel.

    Subtitles in both Breton and French which is fascinating.

    Stop Press. War’l Leur is no more. It merged with another confederation and formed Kenleur:

    “En 2020, elle fusionne avec la confédération Kendalc’h pour devenir la confédération Kenleur. ”

    https://www.facebook.com/kenleur.bzh/

    Here’s one of the local associations which is part of Kenleur.

    https://www.danserien-sant-ke.fr/photos-videos/

    A little more dancing.

    The dancers obviously spend a lot of time and money making their outfits. I suspect there may be special shops where you can get togged up nicely.

  10. A quick detour to Mendocino, California!

    In 2001 they held a French and Breton music camp.

    https://www.goodthyme.com/camp/

    An event that included some ace workshops, such as

    Cliff Stapleton (‘Blowzabella’) – Hurdy-gurdy Maintenance Workshop!

    Well I never!

    Of course, if you really want to experience breton folklore, Quimper in July is the place to be. The Festival Cornouaille. Here’s the programme in Breton.

    https://www.festival-cornouaille.bzh/br/

  11. Thanks, Cheshire! I am learning a lot about Brittany this morning,

    As regards folk costumes, one of the most famous accessories is the “coiffe bigoudène”, the coif worn by the womenfolk of Bigouden Country.

    It’s a garment with a great deal of history that many artists have painted.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigoud%C3%A8ne

    The ladies who wear them are known as bigoudenes.

    It has also featured a great deal in popular culture, not least in adverts by the Tipiak food company..

    “In the French-speaking world, since the 1970s, television commercials from Breizh Cola and most importantly the French food industry company “Tipiak [fr]” have been portraying elderly women dressed as Bigoudènes while shouting “Tipiak, Pirates!”. This famous slogan propelled the term “Tipiak [fr]” to become synonymous with “hacker” in web communities and now refers to hackers or counterfeiters.” (Wikipedia)

    How do they say wanker in Quimper? Find out by listening to the popular Breton singer and comedian Ivor Bigouden.

    I’ll get my coif!

  13. That’s on one of our – well, I say “our”, I mean “my” – lists of places to stay for a few months when we retire.

    Like, I suspect, a lot of people in my age bracket, we spent a lot of holidays in Brittany and Normandy, courtesy of Eurocamp. That, and a year in Provence – no, seriously – cemented my francophilia

    • My first contact with Brittany, which started the long journey to my current love of the music and dance, was working for Eurocamp in Carnac. In fact, another occasional/former contributor to this blog worked on the same site. It was he who did the research and introduced me to the greats of the 70s /80s.

      • Gosh, Cheshire! From Eurocamp worker in Carnac to being a Breton dance instructor at the Cheshire Folk Festival. I bet you never predicted that.

        The quality of the Wiki pages about Breton culture is excellent, I get the feeling that the tourist board in Brittany is rather good at marketing.

  14. Thanks for your trust in me, Cheshire! I will not let you down but will work unflinchingly to ensure that the very highest standards are maintained.

    Time to talk about Eurovision! In 2022, the French entry was sung entirely in Breton.

  16. By this point, the AW hipsters are probably stroking their goatees and wondering when we’ll be getting some jazz.

    Time to welcome saxophonist Timothee Le Bour and accordionist Youen Bodros.

    What is interesting to me here is that the slightly unexpected sound of the sax is gong down vey well with dancers who are giving some welly.

    Here is Timothee playing with folk musicians, singer Rozenn Talec and
    Yannig Noguet on diatonic accordion.

  17. I can’t believe we’ve got this far without mentioning the man who contributed so powerfully to the Breton cultural revival: Alain Stivell. Harpist, composer, piper, songwriter, international star…..

    I found this excellent Scotsman article from 2004 which is very informative.

    https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/great-breton-2462872

    Nolwenn Leroy who sang that duet with Stivell is a successful pop singer who has been exploring her Breton roots. She was really totally chuffed to be singing with the great man.

    These young artists are ensuring that there s nothing dull and dusty abut the Breton musical tradition.

    There are some interesting comparisons to be made with some of the Scottish bands that @Retropath02 has been introducing us to like such as Niteworks and Peat and Diesel.

  18. I feel like the Cat who Got the Cream.

    I just stumbled across a documentary about Brittany in Gaelic!

    “Julie Fowlis (Isle of North Uist, West of Scotland) and Muireann NicAmhlaoibh (Aran Islands, West of Ireland) visit Brittany, accompanied by Mischa MacPherson and Laoise Kelly, to meet some musical friends.”

    Hit the jackpot there!

    • Slowly slowly the comments build.
      Hopefully the full hundred so that the Breton hamper can be brought to Todmorden in October there to be shared out among the participants of the Breton dancing day.

  19. I just checked Wikipedia. There are 206,000 native speakers of Breton. In Wales there are 562,000 Welsh speakers: 19% of the population.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_languages

    None of the many regional languages in France have official status.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_France#Regional_languages

    The Wiki article is excellent. A few titbits.

    “Occitan was already being written at a time when French was not and its literature has continued to thrive, with a Nobel Prize for Frédéric Mistral in 1904.”

    “It is estimated that at the time of the French Revolution in 1789, only half of the population of France could speak French, and as late as 1871 only a quarter spoke French as their native language.”

    “In April 2001, the Minister of Education, Jack Lang,[7] stated formally that for more than two centuries, the political powers of the French government had repressed regional languages[citation needed], and announced that bilingual education would, for the first time, be recognised, and bilingual teachers recruited in French public schools.”

    To whet your appetite, here’s a first lesson in Breton.

    • I was taught French at secondary school by a Glaswegian. No wonder I struggled.

      10 years later, Inter-railling, I found myself in Strasbourg with a pocketful of Francs, and needing to call ahead to my pals in Spain who were going to host me for a few days. So I went to the Tourist Information office, where I discovered I still spoke French with a Weegee accent, and they replied in French with a German accent.

      Is it any wonder I never did find “un téléphone sans des cartes, d’ye ken?”

  22. I thought it would be appropriate to have a tipple from Brittany to accompany my listening this weekend, so I went down to the Systembolaget (State Liquor Store) on Södernmalm to see what they could provide. The lady was very helpful but she did not have one single drop of Breton booze

    If I’d been looking for a drop of something from the Auvergne, to accompany my listening to one of the playlists inspired by Monsieur Lodestone, it would have been a very different story.

    What do they drink in Quimper? I have a feeling that cider might be popular, but maybe I’m mixing it up with Normandy?

    • Perhaps it’s a provincial thing, but when I was in Sweden I’d no more have a convo with someone in a Systembolaget than I’d try to engage a Begal tiger with a ball of wool. They all had the demeanour of The Freak from Prisoner Cell Block H.

      “Here are your two small and bizarrely expensive bottles of beer, you unconscionable degenerate”

  23. I was wondering about the Breton diaspora and came across this excellent Wiki page. Lots of titbits!

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretons

    Fascinating to discover that Jack Kerouac had Breton ancestors.

    https://www.breizh-amerika.com/blog/was-jack-kerouac-really-breton

    Breizh-Amerika looks like an interesting site.

    https://www.breizh-amerika.com/blog/category/bretagne-transamerica

    It exists to boost culture contact between Brittany and North America.

  25. Throughout this thread, my thoughts have constantly returned to sailors. I was baffled as to why. Too many Village People vids perchance?

    And then the centime dropped. At the back of my head, I’d been thinking about the Festival du Chant Marin- the Paimpol Sea Shanty Festival.

    https://www.brittanytourism.com/matching-what-i-want/culture-and-heritage/brittanys-main-events/festival-du-chant-de-marin-sea-shanty-festival/

    It looks like they are all having a blast.

    http://www.paimpol-festival.bzh/index.php/fr/

    Here’s a film diary from the 1999 festival which captures the atmosphere rather well.

    And here’s a classic French shanty.

  26. All roads lead to Cheshire!

    On the subject of sea chanties, let’s have a quick moment of backflashing and return to last year when Cap’n Salwarpe started this thread.

    Sea shanties?

    The Cheshire Cat had many very interesting things to say and contributions were coming in thick and fast,

    Artists mentioned included:

    Kenneth Wiiliams, the Storm Weather Shanty Choir, Coope, Boyes and Simpson, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, The Longest Johns, Triakel, Cyril Tawney, Nathan Evans, Ewan MacColl, Bagpuss, Mike Waterson, The Pogues and and Jacob Rees Mogg!

    I even made a playlist.

  27. A few more Breton bands…

    Plantec

    Sonerien Du – some enthusiastic dancing by the audience here

    Strobinell- one again some very lively dancing. This is not music to sit still to!

  28. When you went to work at the Eurocamp at Carnac, Cheshire, you were continuing a tourism tradition that went back many decades.

    From the Postcard Museum, here is a very enjoyable look at La Belle Epoque.

    https://artsandculture.google.com/story/the-belle-%C3%89poque-of-tourism-in-brittany-le-carton-voyageur-mus%C3%A9e-de-la-carte-postale/bAXxfKR2_RtUIg?hl=en

    I was particularly amused by Flaubert’s dismissive comment about the Carnac Stones. It seems that obsessive Celtomania was sweeping France at the time and this was his reaction.

    On the subject of Celtomania, the publication of Barzaz Breiz in 1839 was a milestone.for Breton culture.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barzaz_Breiz

  29. Oops! My facts on Celtomania were a bit wooly.

    This excellent article will put you straight.

    https://www.worldhistory.biz/ancient-history/54698-romanticism-and-celtomania.html

    It all started in the 18th century and the Romantic poets were rapid to embrace the Celts.

    “By the end of the eighteenth century the association between Druids and megaliths was firmly established in the popular imagination: despite the best efforts of archaeologists, it has still not been entirely dislodged. There was indeed something about the Celts that later eighteenth-century Europeans simply found irresistible, and they went down with a bad case of what came to be known as ‘Celtomania’. Though Celtomania burned itself out before the middle of the nineteenth century, the Celts themselves have loomed large in the European historical imagination ever since.

    Celtomania was a manifestation of the Romantic movement, a cultural rebellion against the rationalism and materialism of the Enlightenment. Romanticism exalted imagination, irrationalism, individualism and rebellion, and love of wild nature, the mysterious and the exotic. The aesthetic sensibilities of Europeans were radically altered as a result, leaving no aspect of the arts unaffected. These aesthetic changes had a great impact on attitudes to the Celts. Everything that was then known about the ancient Celts came from the works of hostile Classical Greek and Roman writers, who had regarded them as dangerous barbarians. These writers constructed what in their eyes was an unflattering stereotype of the Celts as violent, proud, undisciplined and superstitious barbarians. Treated uncritically, this originally hostile and inaccurate stereotype seemed to embody to the Romantics everything that their movement stood for. The Celts were transformed from dangerous savages into noble savages, unspoiled by decadent civilisation. Although almost nothing was known about their beliefs, the Druids became examples of spirituality to be emulated by intellectuals who were disillusioned by the impersonal nature of organised religion and repelled by the ugliness created by the industrial revolution. ”

    That whole site seems to be well worth a browse. History presented in short, entertaining, readable chunks.

    Rather like Horrible Histories.

  31. I cannot believe that we’ve got this far, without me realising that one of my favourite (French) films of the past few years, Celine Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, was filmed on the Quiberon Peninsular and in Saint-Déga in Brittany.

    Thanks heavens for the Brittany Tourist Board who’ve made a list of the best films and TV shows filmed on location in this neck of the woods.

    https://www.brittanytourism.com/matching-what-i-want/ideas/8-movies-series-to-discover-brittany/

    Director, Celine Scamma is one of the leading lights of modern French cinema. Set in 1770, Portrait is a powerful, very moving story of an impossible love affair between two young women. Script, acting, cinematography are all superb. Very warmly recommended.

    The picturesque Breton coastline makes no small contribution to the film.

  32. Interesting titbit! Jean-Luc Bannalec, the author of The Inspector Dupin mysteries, which are the basis of the TV show on that list, is the nom-de-plume of a German writer, Jörg Bong, who writes in German.

    https://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/index.php/features/binge-reading-for-a-lockdown

    He clearly writes a good mystery so the tourist board won’t be complaining. It reminds me of American writer Donna Leon, who writes top notch thrillers about Venetian detective, Commissario Guido Brunetti.

  33. I can’t think of any other places where the making of a movie is commemorated by a statue.

    However down by the seaside at Saint Marc Sur Mer in Brittany, there is a statue of Jacques Tati staring out over the beach. It was here that Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday was filmed. in 1953

    It’s changed a bit since then!

  34. Well, the Chester Folk Festival dancefloor picked up the Gavotte de l’Aven remarkably well, I thought. Maybe I was a bit ambitious introducing an asymmetric waltz later in the workshop – better planning required for next year.
    What was remarkable was discovering that someone with whom I have been dancing for nigh on ten years is the mother-in-law of a member of this parish! I am intrigued. Maybe a personal message awaits.
    In the mean time, I have to check all these goodies that have been posted in my absence. I haven’t yet got past the Guinness Book of Records-busting hour-long dance that Hubert posted above. Eheu!
    Not much time to dwell either, as more French dancing is in store from tomorrow in the beautiful environs of a Herefordshire castle. Ooh look, it’s an asymmetric waltz! (you can pretty much here the chant of 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2 / 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2)

    • It looks like they are having a great time.

      You keep waltzing away and we will continue to keep this thread bubbling under nicely.

      After all that dancing you will need be in the need of a bite of supper from a well-packed hamper!

    • Oh lord, the asymmetric waltz. I used to be a pretty good dancer in my 20s, Viennese Waltz and (my best/fave) Quickstep, with a bit of Jive and Latin. Then we started the Tango, and I spent more time on my arse than on my feet.

    • Splendid, Hubert!

      Wibbly fifties strings! And that wonderfully authoritative narrator describing the eccentric lives of these Breton peasants with their cows and their spinning wheels. Does life get any better?

      Suddenly I am a toddler watching with Maman and clutching at her apron strings.

  37. I just stumbled across this site What a find.

    https://bonjourfrombrittany.wordpress.com/2020/05/24/bookish-in-brittany/

    A very well-researched article about writers, both French and international, who were either from Brittany or wrote novels set there.

    Jules Verne (born in Nantes), Uderzo and Goscinny’s Asterix and Obelix, Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand, A.S. Byatt, Helen MacInnes, Pierre Loti, P.G. Wodehouse, Alphonse de Chateaubriant, Edith Wharton, Alexandre Dumas, Honore de Balzac etc.

    I did French A level, but nevertheless feel shamelessly ignorant about French literature.

    English literature is so rich and varied that there was a tendency to ignore that fact that there were many fine authors writing in other languages,

  38. As I head off for another weekend of dancing, I’ll leave you with this brilliant display. It’s not breton; from the style, I suspect we are in some salle de fetes in the Auvergne. I could learn a lot from watching this on repeat.

    • That is a tremendous clip. As someone comments, they are improvising on the theme as the dance develops.

      BanjoZ4100, who seems to be based in the US, has an interesting YT channel with extremely varied content.

      Here’s another. I enjoyed this rather splendid 18th century, dirge-like tune with lots of drums, bagpipes and “vielles a roue” (hurdy gurdies).

      I stumbled across this stupendous article about the French hurdy gurdy. It’s in French but worth visiting for the photos alone.

      https://la-musique-et-vous.com/vielle-a-roue/

      Banjo doesn’t give any description of this clip, but the commenters piece it together.

      “Au vus des habits je pensais au départ que cette fette musicale historique etait une région proche de la vendée, ou du poitou. D’autant qu’on y voit une veuze plus typique de l’Ouest. Mais en y regardant en détail on y voit une affiche indiquant quelque chose à socourt. Donc on est dans les Vosges Entre Nancy et Epinal. Musique sympa. Habits qui me change des fest-noz de mon Finistere. Pas mal.”

      “The festival at Chateau d’Ars. I know some of the crowd but members of the group are Maxou, Fredric and manu Paris from La Chavannée. Luckily I live nearby and am there every year.
      Originally known as the Festival St Chartier which was founded in 1976 to honour 100 years since the death of Georges Sands, who lived a few Km from there, and wrote a novel about the Maîtres Sonneurs. ( local bagpipe players.)”

      A novel about pipers!

      https://books.google.se/books/about/The_Master_Pipers.html?id=FDQbAQAAIAAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

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