[lyrics, translation & facts for the opening song from our album >here<]
The opening of the album, Pemp Bolot (five bullets) is a composition from Yann with traditional lyrics. In Brittany, we have lyrics and tunes, and they’re in most of cases not connected to each other, indeed, you may pick up some lyrics and use almost any tune with it. There’s of course some rules regarding their geographic origin, but once you get it, it provides musicians a lot of freedom to use them.
“An Dezertour” is quite popular among singers most probably because it has a very good inner rhythm. It’s one of the first songs Simone remembers having learned. Regarding the story, it may relate to the 19th century Napoleon’s wars, it may also be older but with late changes, the topic is quite a common one in French traditional music, even with the details regarding “the blue scarf to close my eyes” (see translation below) is to be found in French language versions.
The introduction was initially just an idea for a short sequence that Simone wanted to use for this video, she wanted something very ceremonial to go along with the sun dawn, and on which she could add kind of mystic voices.
Only a week before sending the album for manufacturing, we thought that it could be a nice introduction, both for this song and for the album.
Instruments : guitar, violin, darbuka, percussion sounds on introduction : davul samples.
Rythme : gavotte danse.
This slightly different version was recorded live in Beirut last spring.
. astrakan project . 