The Best of French Traditional Music
Trad Examples for Bal Folk Dancers
The French bal folk scene is strange. To the outside observer there seems to be — like in many trad music communities — a conservative/pure drop contingent and a progressive/evolving tradition/jazz it up contingent. But it is actually more complicated, with a number of different esthetics and values being upheld by different participants in the scene. First there are questions of relationship to “the tradition”: how much do musicians (or dancers) actually know about the tradition, to what extent are they able to embody what they know when playing (or dancing), and to what extent do they allow themselves to deviate (consciously or sub-consciously) from this tradition. Then there are the various purposes: keeping a culture alive, creating good music, enjoying the shared aspect of traditional music and dance. And on top of this will come the use of “outside influences” (which have probably always existed, but play a different role now): how to use harmony, percussion, ornamentation, timbre, different instruments, etc.
Because France has such a diversity of regional cultures and because of the tardiness in collecting music and dance styles, we actually know relatively little about “the tradition” and such information can be conflicting and hard to come by. Because a large contingent of the bal folk community places a value on diversity of dances and on a culture of being open to everyone, this results in a lot of playing and dancing that is of poor stylistic quality (i.e. having very little rooting in the many different traditions — or even the little we know about them) and poor overall quality (i.e. the desire to be accepting does not foster a culture of improvement). This encourages a popular misconception of traditional music and dance: it’s simple and jolly (and so long as people are dancing and having fun, they’re doing it right — though this latter statement I would mostly agree with).
We are also blessed with a large number of really good musicians, in terms of technique, understanding of music in general, creativity and expressiveness. Many of these musicians (even the good ones), however, play with what could be considered poor stylistic quality. This happens for many reasons: lack of awareness, lack of culture, lack of time to study the many different cultures, lack of desire to study these cultures, having felt limited in their ability to produce expressive or interesting music while sticking to the traditional “styles”. One of the most interesting of these reasons is that there is very little pressure from the dancers (the most common audience, since concerts are rare) for stylistic excellence — exciting, energetic, interesting music that a dance can be shoehorned into is enough for most — for many dancers, having never learnt, heard or felt the particular adequacy of certain musics for certain dances, no shoehorning is even necessary and the more stylistically “accurate” musics would actually suit their “astylistic” dance less. On top of this, many criticisms from dancers (often regarding tempos, the obviousness of the beats, and whether a music matches the dance that it is supposed to) also stem from a position of cultural ignorance, making their incoherence easy to dismiss.
Another contingent of musicians (and dancers) espouse a more style/culture/tradition-based esthetic, often because rather than finding them “simple”, they find them particularly rich and appealing. They tend to play dances from only one (usually their native) area, and to be so immersed in that tradition that whatever they create based on this tradition, some aspect of this “native accent” tends to remain, without it needing to be a conscious choice. While a certain amount of groupthink is involved in this (a few influential musicians’ or dancers’ interpretation of “the tradition” could easily start a current where no other interpretation would be appreciated), the ultimate test lies in the relationship to source recordings, the ability of anybody to create their own interpretation from these materials (assuming they are available), and the perfect suitability of stylistically “good” music to stylistically “good” dance. The excellent musicians in the “trad” esthetic tend to be appreciated by “trad” and “folk” dancers alike — with “folk” dancers sometimes regretting the lack of variety in the dances they play, and sometimes regretting the austerity of their playing, which their ears and bodies are often not attuned to — and at the same time, not necessarily having the stylistic dance ability to appreciate the difference between a “trad” band and a “folk” band.
There are a lot of scare quotes in the previous paragraphs because this “folk”/”trad” distinction corresponds to stereotypes in the myriad esthetics I describe in the first paragraph. For example, it is quite common for people who are deeply immersed in the tradition to produce things that cannot be easily classified (or that could be easily dismissed by some as “definitely not trad”). It is also common for people to believe they know something about “the tradition” and to be entirely mistaken when claiming that something is “not trad”. And then there are people like me. I am interested in many traditions, appreciate that certain dance and music styles do go particularly well together, and have found that immersing myself if these styles is a good way to heighten my experience of them — this usually then diminishes my appreciation of “astylistic” versions of these dances and musics. However, I try to not let my music and dance be censured too much by what I “believe” to be the tradition, in particular letting various crossover influences from tango, swing and blues happen (and then see whether I liked them).
Because the “trad” communities are numerous and difficult to find out about (there is more “bal folk”, especially in cities and foreign countries, and the music tends to be more austere, and bal folk is the esthetic that wants to be open to everyone), people tend to start with “bal folk” by default. So for people who might be wondering what the bal trad people are so excited about, here is a list of videos that, to me, represent some of the best that a given music and dance can be, when produced by people who are immersed in the music. For each dance type, I’m posting a more “austere trad” video in terms of the music and a more “progressive trad” (whatever those terms might mean) video. I also tried to find videos with some nice dancing in them (more inconsistent as it’s rare to have a whole dancefloor of experienced dancers).
(I made my own artificial judgement call as to where to draw the line when saying that something is “progressive trad” vs “not trad”. I’m also biased in that I prefer singing and bands with only two or three musicians — I also don’t much like Breton bagpipes, be they biniou kozh or great highland pipes, because I find a lot of their playing is tainted by the technical perfectness esthetic of pipebands — if you have some great examples that fall outside of my preferences, send them my way and I’ll post them).
(This playlist is similar, but from an astylistic perspective. Note that it includes many similar videos to those below.)
Britanny/Bretagne
(Many of these videos were posted by youtube user Avelenn, who has great taste and likes good music from the whole spectrum)
Gavotte
Annie Ebrel/Nolúen Le Buhé
Le Bour/Bodros
Plinn
(I really like Plinn and couldn’t choose only 2)
Guillou/Menneteau
Kan ha Diskan & Human Beatbox
Darhaou (bal & ton double)
Spontus
Kost Ar C’hoad
Skolvan
Rond de Saint-Vincent
David et Huguel
Manglo (not particularly progressive)
Tour
Tchikidi
Alambig Elektrik Sextet
Andro
Betzi-Raly/Gautier
Startijenn
Kazh a barh
Wipidoup
Moisson/Landat
Hanter dro
Teir
Les Traine Meuriennes (not particularly “progressive”)
Ridée 6 temps
Trimaud-Béliard
Hamon Martin
Laridé 8 temps
Le Bot/Chevrolier
BivOAc
Laridé-Gavotte
Kejaj
Gavotte de l’Aven
Moisson/Syz
Avant-Deux
(from the Gallo part of Britanny)
Rajalu/Bouthillier
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=504387549623183
Esquisse
Auvergne
Bourrée 3 temps (Auvergne/Limousin)
Delaunay/Champeval/Brémaud
Komred
And some nice dancing
More nice dancing
Roda of bourrées (not a traditional practice, but a great idea borrowed from various jam traditions such as Capoeira)
Poitou
Maraichine
Ciac Boum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dkGWs3LQA
Avant-Deux
Berry/Bourbonnais
Bourrée 2 temps
Bougnat Sound
Sud-Ouest/Gascony
Branle Béarnais/Branle d’Ossau
Dani Detammaecker
Ad’arrOn
Rondeau
Dani Detammaecker
Faburden
Corbefin/Marsac(Rondeau de Samatan)
Feiz Noz Moc’h (no dancing)
Ronde du Quercy
Brotto/Lopez
Demos of various dances from Gascony (unchoreographed)
Couples dances
Couples dances are from all over and tend to allow a great degree of liberty in their interpretation, making the boundary between “trad” and “not trad” even more elusive. Here are a few nice examples.
Polka
Julien Cartonnet & co (Tania Buisse, Colin Delzant, Antoine Cognet) (dancing is very folk-y)
Scottish
Mister Klof
Mazurka
Landat/Moisson
Originally posted at http://scriptogr.am/gregdyke/post/trad-examples-for-bal-folk-dancers
