The podcast from our interview at RTBF in Belgium… but it’s in French!
Enfin quelque chose à me mettre dans l’oreille pour les francophones, le podcast de l’interview de Simone sur la première de la RTBF lors de notre passage en Belgique
Only pictures today… but they are nice!
Whether you already have an account there or not, you’re most probably familiar and a fan of You Tube. If you do have a user account on You Tube, no need to tell you how much easier it will be for your to stay tuned about our new videos… If not, well, this might be your chance, it’s a nice way to keep track of videos you like, play them later, etc…
Here is our direct link to subscribe:
Direct link to our channel being: http://youtube.com/astrakanproject
We realise we love more and more creating and sharing videos, mostly music videos but not only, and the new way You Tube allows anyone to create a consistent channel, and organise it easily to make it a lively community is very promising. So … expect even more videos of our kind! And here is the one we made to present our channel to people that wouldn’t know anything about us – any comments are of course welcome!
The music is the same we used on the 3 episodes for our quest to get our booking agent (this quest is actually still going on, although for Belgium we are now working with a very dedicated agent – we’ll get back to that later), but it is more about presenting the kind of videos we may share than specifically presenting our music. I’m happy I’m getting a hand on my video editing software! It’s like a new world of possibilities – and I can even praise myself, for I only started to video edit less than 2 years ago, and I made quite some progress!
Have fun watching! At least… as much fun as we had doing it!
§ Simone
This is the harbour:
This is the Cat:
And this is live video we shot outdoors a couple of days ago, we took advantage of the very sunny weather to play an acoustic version of Erwanig Skolan, only voice and bendir … and the cat that we only noticed afterwards!
It has another flavour from this studio version:
… although the basic rhythm is quite the same!
Brittany is well know among folk lovers to have a great variety of traditional dances. And indeed, they are quite a variety of those dances. Although most of them have specific names nowadays, some decades ago they would mostly be referred to as “circle dance”. Mostly “Dañs Tro” (for all the variations on the gavotte) and “An-Dro” (in the Vannes area). Because of Breton grammar, Tro and Dro are indeed the same word, first letter change is a typical marker of Celtic languages. But they mean “circle”. And every area would mostly only dance one kind of dance. Their dance. The one from their community, or we could even say, the one that would make them belong to their community.
In our area, we mostly dance gavotte. In remote villages, there is no problem playing 2 complete sets of gavotte in a row (a complete set is about 15, 20 min). We almost consider that other dances, from other parts of the province are more like… fun! We like them, we like to dance them, we enjoy them. We even try to play them. But gavotte is ours. It is part of who we are.
I always had the feeling that dancing was and still is for some people more than a show, or something to be good at. It is just something to get together. To feel you are united. To feel you are part of “that” circle. This is what Within the Circle is about.
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Within the Circle, you don’t look outside, you’re not there to show off. You can just be yourself.
§ Simone
When I started learning traditional songs from Brittany, I did like many singers from my generation did: I dove into the old recordings made from great Breton singers. At that time (from the 50’s on I would say, but a lot in the late 60’s until the 80’s), among the few people concerned by this wonderful culture, a few started to visit old singers at home to record them, some because they knew great songs, others because they had a nice voice, or a good sense of rhythm. Not all of them had been known as singers. The common points between all these recording is that most of them were made on private equipment (and even later on tape recorder) and also most of them were recorded in the kitchen.
Here’s a sample of the great singer José Bertrand (also known as “Madame Bertrand” or “Marie-José Bertrand”)
In many cultures, the kitchen is the heart of the house, the place where you gather to sing songs or tell stories. In Brittany it used to be so at the fireplace. Then although most of fireplaces had disappeared, been replaced by ceramics on the walls (hence the unique sound of kitchen recordings!) and electrical stove, it is still the place you get to discuss, drink bowls of coffee (no, no mug or cup, only bowls!), eat pancakes and butter cakes…
When trying new things or just discussing new songs, we cannot help but do it in the kitchen! Here’s some trial for next album (please, do notice our kitchen’ acoustic and natural reverb!)
We do have a special room for “serious” recording sessions, with silent acoustic, with a door that closes. But even on our first album, they are some tracks in which we never managed to bring as much spirit as on the first dirty kitchen trial. So, somewhere, hidden in the reverb, delays and effects, you still have the “kitchen spirit“!
§ Simone
PS: a recent recording with the most iconic songs from Madame Bertrand has been released (with improved sound!) (image links to Amazon)
In 2 weeks time we’ll be heading to Belgium, we’re opening our maps and discovering new roads! It’s really exciting!
When we got back 2 weeks ago to Istanbul, Yann had a small concert planned in Kumbara Cafe, a typical small place like they’re many in Istanbul, a concert place hosted in a former flat in the old buildings from Beygoglu, where you can eat&drink&listen to music. It’s hard to find them without directions, most of them being located on the upper floors.
Yann played some Breton dance repertoire from Brittany with Richard Laniepce, the famous Kolektif Istanbul band leader. And we played also some songs from Astrakan Project repertoire:
We didn’t even know it existed, but it does! A method for English speakers to learn Breton language!
We haven’t tried or even seen it, if anyone has any feedback, we’ll share it around most definitely. >Here is an Amazon link<, it’s even cheap (about 20€):
Thank you all for your support along this 2013 year, no words can tell how much it mattered to us!
§ Simone & Yann
. astrakan project . 