Who are french folk music performers?

Answer 1

Originally they were usually uneducated (French) working people, generally unknown outside their own immediate district. Quite often a semi-professional musician, who played the violin, the hurdy gurdy, the bagpipes or the Accordion would provide music for dancing at weddings, baptisms or public holiday gatherings.

Since the invention of sound recording at the end of the 19th century some quite well-known folk performers appeared, such as Les Soeurs Goadec, a group of female singers from Brittany (between 1956 and 1983) and the Auvergnat bagpipers Antonin Bouscatel (1867-1945) and Martin Cayla (1889-1951) who worked mostly in Paris.

The 1960s and 70s saw a revival of French Folk Music, starting in Paris and spreading across France, attracting young, middle-class people who were encouraged to take up playing folk instruments and to go out into the countryside and collect folk songs and music from elderly country people. The major folk performers of this period were John Wright (fiddle and Jew's harp player) and Catherine Perrier (singer), Yvon Guilcher, Jean-Loup Baly, Michel Colleu and Jean-François Dutertre. They were followed by musicians such as the piper Jean Blanchard and the singers Marc Robine and Gabriel Yacoub, and groups such as Mélusine, Malicorne and Le Grand Rouge.

The Breton harpist Alan Stivell and the group Malicorne amalgamated traditional music with Rock Music in the 1970s and 1980s. The group Perlinpin Fòlc, from the south-west of France, experimented with songs in the Gascon language with rhythms and harmonies taken from Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Basque music and jazz.

Current French folk bands include Carré de Deux, La Chavannée de Montbel and Faubourg de Boignard.