In Open Tuning: The Guitar in Breton Music
Open tuning, or, if you prefer, "open tuning" in English, is a technique, a way of playing the guitar. In truth, in that great melting pot of musical ideas that is Brittany, no one had ever dreamed of using it. In fact, other instruments are rooted in tradition: the biniou, for example, or the bombarde, the accordion; the typical sounds of the guitar, an instrument with generous sides and a prominent fingerboard, were far removed from the tastes of the artists who roamed the streets and squares of this region in northwest France. To think of a union would have been risky. But in 1975, something worth telling happened. Soig Siberil, a Breton from Paris with an Algerian mother, decided to settle in Brittany in 1973 at the age of 23; It was then that he met some musicians from the group Sked who were desperately looking for a guitarist, and Soig, whose knowledge at the time didn't extend beyond that of Bob Dylan, somewhat unwisely decided to accept. But the initial results were far from brilliant. Two years later, however, in 1975, an unexpected event occurred: specifically, an encounter with Irishman Michaël O'Donnell, who introduced him to the world of modal guitar tunings, the so-called "open" tunings. Among these was the famous DADGAD (named after the notes of the six-string tuning). It was precisely thanks to this technique that the guitar entered and, even more astonishingly, was welcomed into Breton music by an enthusiastic audience. We knew of instruments once used in the traditions of a culture and then disappeared, covered by the dust of time, but never the other way around, that is, of an instrument adopted from scratch. Why, then, did the open chord allow the guitar to cross the threshold of a culture to which it did not belong? It's difficult to answer with words; you have to put yourself there, listen to how some strings, out of tune, sound empty, producing dissonances similar to those of the bombard and a drone effect similar to that of double-reed instruments. Against this light backdrop, the solo strings impart crystalline phrasings that seem to come from the depths of the soundboard. The symbiosis is perfectly achieved. Try listening to Gitar, the CD released in 2001: the sound of the guitars (in this case Soig is accompanied by Jean Felix Lalanne) is so light that the gavottes and rides, traditional Breton dances, seem carried by the wind; and in that same wind one can hear the echo of other, more distant and exotic instruments, such as the derbuka, the karkabou, and the bendïr, which use the same modal tunings. Despite those who view music merely as a means of static preservation of a culture, it's thrilling to discover the dynamic that turns that same culture into a meeting ground. Without straining, the open chord, which from a certain perspective is a purely technical fact, symbolically represents the open chord with which music unites people rather than divides them. Hence the title of this article. We're certain that Soig Siberil has never forgotten his Algerian origins, but this is a question we could ask him in the interview that "Traditional Arranged" will publish in an upcoming issue. In the meantime, preparing your palate means listening to PSG, the new guitar CD by the trio Patrick Marzin, Soig Siberil, and Jean Charles Guichen (reviewed in this same issue of the magazine), which brings a new verve to the sound of the guitar. But there's another story to tell here: that of Soig Siberil's followers, of the students who have surpassed their master.PSG is a point of arrival, but it would be better to say an important stage because, starting from it, new paths open up. In short, we could define it equally as a point of arrival and departure. An arrival because Jean Charles Guichen, for example, is a young guitarist, a student of Soig, who has produced a splendid solo CD, one with a quartet, and several with a group called Ar Re Yaouank: the translation of the name is "the young people," as the public called four thugs, dressed in leather jackets, who landed on the music scene in the early 1990s. They so captured the spirit of Breton youth that, at fest noz, it was common to see kids dancing all night to the band's frenetic rhythm. We're using the past tense because Ar Re Yaouank no longer exists (unfortunately): Jean Charles has decided to pursue a more reflective, acoustic, but no less vibrant, musical path. For what a critic's subjective judgment is worth, I'd call Mémoire vive, the CD the Guichen Quartet released in early 2002 on Coop Breizh, a masterpiece. The meeting with Soig and Patrick Marzin stems from a challenge: is it possible to get the audience at a fest noz dancing with just three guitars? Rationally, the answer would be "no," since the guitar lacks the rhythm section, indispensable in a live show, which, for example, drums, bass, accordion, or bagpipes possess. Instead, our three win the challenge with this strategy: imagine lying on a sofa listening to any PSG song. The beginning will be predictable, the dance music follows its course on the traditional rhythm, made up of recurring, circular riffs: that's what gets the dancers moving. Your muscles are relaxed and you imagine the steps you'll follow on the evening of the ball; But, at a certain point, once the dance is underway and the rhythm stabilizes, the three guitarists writhe, playing with one voice in a tight silence, each string struck becoming a burst of creative energy. You find yourself standing: you'll never sit on that sofa again. Here's the meeting point: Soig's refinement has met Jean Charles's impetus. We imagine the two looking at each other during rehearsals, nodding in agreement, understanding each other. Creating music is art, euphoria. The open-tuned guitar naturally has many exponents today, and among them, we'd also like to mention Gilles le Bigot, author of a very special CD released just a few days ago: Empreintes. Gilles is, to a certain extent, Soig Siberil's heir, considering that he took his place in the group Kornog in 1986. He is currently the guitarist for Skolvan but has played with popular bands such as Barzaz and Heritage de celtes. He lives among the fishermen of Douarnenez, where he has set up his studio in a small back room on Place des Pecheurs, with guitars and various instruments leaning against the wall, plus some recording equipment. The new album, Empreintes, is Gilles's first work under his own name, featuring ten tracks in total, including eight of his own compositions. Some are deeply evocative, such as Kerjacob, where Bernard Le Dreau's guitar and clarinet transport the listener's mind to the most secret paths of nostalgia, to places of childhood, which for Gilles correspond to the garden of his father's house where he could eat pears with a special flavor. But we would like to talk about Eithne Ni Uillachain, singer of the Spanish group La Lugh and a friend of Gilles. Eithne died in May 1999, shortly after recording an instrumental piece that Gilles Le Bigot had composed and performed on a Skolvan album (Swing and Tears, to be precise). The instrumental was called "Les pecheurs" (the fishermen), and in her vocal version, Eithne transformed it into a ballad (The Fisherman) with an Irish flavor that simultaneously excites and confuses our senses: this girl's voice is velvety and deep, tormenting to the point of tearing at the very core of our sensibility. Is it a living voice, or is it a dream? It isn't: Gilles recovered the original band and remastered the tape, building a new music around her voice, with an open-tuned guitar arrangement that wouldn't even suffice with adjectives. Beauty in art erases the distance between past and present; Gilles moves us with something that is authentic but no longer exists. It's an unacceptable state: we wish what we love could exist forever.
Agostino Roncallo