Label: SouffleContinu Records

大名作!!オリジナルは1976年にフレンチ・フォークレーベルNevenoeより発表された、孤高の女性ケルトハープ奏者Kristen Noguesによる傑作1st[Marc'h Gouez]。ギター、ピアノ、ヴァイオリン、フルートを演奏する十数人の友人達と共に独自のブルターニュ音楽を作曲、確かなフォークロアとして刻み込んだ超名曲揃いのアルバム。解説にメレディス・モンク、ブリジット・フォンテーヌ、エマニュエル・パルナン、パスカル・コメラードの名が挙げられていますが、それらの要素も随所に感じられます。







“Why would I sing in French? I have Breton culture, I speak Breton, I live in Brittany, and the Breton language is the language of this country…” So explained Kristen Noguès, of whom this is the first of the (rare) albums that she recorded Marc’h Gouez, is a fabulous voyage in space on each listening.

Noguès learned the Breton language as a child, at the same time as the Celtic harp, – taking lessons with Denise Mégevand, who would go on to teach others, notably Alan Stivell. At the beginning of the 1970s, she discovered the Breton song tradition (soniou and gwerziou) through Yann Poëns and became involved in Névénoé, a cooperative of traditional expression founded by Gérard Delahaye and Patrick Ewen. It was under this label that her first album Marc’h Gouez, was released in 1976.

With a dozen friends playing guitar, piano, violins, flutes…, Noguès composed not Breton music, but music from Brittany: a type of shared folklore in which imagination is married to the reality of the moment, that of social demands and companionship. At the very beginning of the record, we can hear her drawing up a chair, before the plucked notes of the harp become a cascade: “Enez Rouz”, is an invitation to listen up close.

We are reminded here of the Meredith Monk of “Greensleeves”, there of the early albums of Brigitte Fontaine / Areski, elsewhere of Emmanuelle Parrenin, Pascal Comelade... Noguès rhyming pattern is ever changing: airy (“Hunvre”), cosmopolitain (“Pinvidik Eo Va C'hemener”), enigmatic (“Ar Bugel Koar”), profound (“Ar Gemenerez”) or enchanting (“Hirness An Devezhiou”). And then there is the track from which the album takes its’ name: Marc’h Gouez which, between
nursery rhyme and chamber music, weaves a fabulous web in which the auditor is obliged to be caught. “Brittany equals poetry”: so said André… Breton; and Kristen Noguès proves it to be true.