Break Out the Floorspeakers: Celtic by way of France
Alan Stivell brought Breton music into the Celtic mainstream
In the 1960s, as folk music was enjoying a boom in the United States, young musicians in Great Britain began exploring their own roots. Bands such as Fairport Convention, Lindisfarne and Steeleye Span began incorporating traditional English songs and instrumentation into their music — helping drive an interest in Renaissance and Medieval music from the islands.
But the Irish had already been there, with The Chieftains founded in 1962 focusing on traditional songs and instruments. And across the Irish Sea in Scotland, the Battlefield Band was doing the same thing.
Traditional folk bands were popping up all over in the late ’60s, and the Celtic revival took in not only Irish and Scottish, but Welsh as well.
But the most surprising artist to come out of the Celtic revival had to have been Alan Stivell — a Celtic harpist from the west coast of France.
It’s not terribly well-known, I don’t think, that the Brittany peninsula is Celtic territory.
Unlike the ancient Gauls who populated what is today France, the Bretons are actually descended from refugees from the British islands fleeing the Saxon invasions a few centuries later. Still related, but apparently a different branch of the Celtic family.
By the 1960s, the number of Breton speakers had fallen below 1 million, and efforts began to revive it.
Stivell’s father instilled a love of Breton history and culture in his son, and also helped re-create the traditional Breton harp —which young Alan learned to play.
Stivell issued a few singles in the early 1960s while still a teen, but started gaining more notice with the release of his first full-length album, “Reflets,” in 1970.
This release put him smack in the middle of the Celtic revival, and also helped spark an interest in the Breton language — which Stivell sang in, even though he’d mostly grown up in Paris.
After that debut, Stivell issued at least one album a year every year throughout the 1970s.
In 1975, Stivell recorded a concert he gave in Dublin - heart of the Celtic renaissance, including a traditional Breton dance (above).
Stivell was never content to simply play traditional Breton music, though — he wanted to bring it into modern times. His 1980 “Symphonie Celtique” was a concept album, marrying elements of progressive rock to his Breton roots, utilizing a choir and a full symphony.
His 1991 album, “The Mist of Avalon,” returned him the prog-rock vein after spending much of the 1980s exploring a kind of mellow New Age sound — but this prog rock was closer to early King Crimson in its melding of folk and classical than it was to Yes or ELP.
In 1995, Stivell issued his most modern album yet, “Brian Boru,” which was full-on electrified Celtic rock.
He has stayed active, releasing his most recent album, “Human-Kelt,” in 2018, shortly before COVID shut down the world. This outing found him in strong voice, with a broadened musical vision. There are elements of 1980s’ New Age, his earlier prog rock explorations, the Celtic rock of his late 1990s period, and of course, underpinning it all, the rhythms of his Breton roots.
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