"It’s 2.15 now. So let’s take a break and get back to work in fifteen minutes, OK?" orders Erik Marchand, addressing his team of young musicians soaking up the Langonnet sunshine as they finish up their coffee or smoke a last hasty cigarette. There’s obviously no room for slacking at the second session of the Kreizh Breizh Akadémi (Academy of Central Brittany) where this year’s orchestra is to be led by the Algerian-born ‘ud-player Mehdi Haddab.

New priorities

The Kreizh Breizh Akadémi, which came into existence in 2005, is the brainchild of Erik Marchand, a traditional singer, a virtuoso on the treujenn gaol (the Breton clarinet) and general reviver and rediscoverer of Central Brittany’s local heritage. Marchand has the pressures of his own busy career to handle, not to mention his ongoing work researching and cataloguing recordings of traditional Breton folk songs. But he made the time to set up his academy in the hope of transmitting his passion for Breton sounds to the younger generation and inspiring them to play the music as it would have been played a little less than a century ago now.

Marchand selected a dozen professional musicians from Brittany, all aged between 20 and 30, and all from a wide variety of musical backgrounds, to form the second "KBA" orchestra. This year, the emphasis is on strings, guitars, the laoud, the ‘ud, the mandolin, violins and harp as well as flutes and vocals. (The academy’s first orchestra, Norkst, was a much more heterogeneous affair). The musicians taking part in this year’s group assembled at La Grande Boutique in Langonnet for three intensive days’ work, the idea being that they would create three original pieces with Mehdi Haddab, an ‘ud-player who takes a very rock’n’roll approach to his instrument (an electrified version of the traditional lute).

The plan is that in June and September the group will go on to develop other pieces with two other teachers. Last year, Thierry Robin, Keyvan Chemirani and Danyel Waro headed up to Central Brittany to give their own master classes and supervise arrangements. So in the course of 2008, the second "KBA" orchestra will have its own repertoire and be ready to play concerts in France and the rest of Europe. The idea of recording an album has not been ruled out either.

Back to modality

The musicians chosen to form the second "KBA" orchestra have now filed into the main room where rehearsal sessions are to be held, sitting in a circle, grouped according to instrument: the rhythm section (double bass, cajon), the harp, two female vocalists, the flute section, violins, guitar, laoud and mandolin. Erik Marchand is positioned behind his keyboards, proposing various tones, while Mehdi Haddab stands in the centre, assuming the role of conductor. The trick, it appears, is to hit upon the right rhythmic pattern, giving each instrument its proper place. And the orchestra must also preserve the music’s traditional folk base, yet give it a modern feel without denaturing it.

Each of the pieces developed here has already been prepared in advance, the orchestra having worked with Erik Marchand at a first session held at the end of March. The singer delved into the vast collection of traditional recordings he has now computerized and selected a series of gwerz - a capella songs, such as those by Madame Bertrand or Les soeurs Goadec, which were once very popular in Central Brittany. And Mehdi and the orchestra are to use these songs as a basis for their work.

The Kreizh Breizh Akadémi is based on a very specific approach to music. As Erik Marchand explains, "Breton music is modal, but in its recent history - I’m talking around the last eighty years or so – its evolution has revolved around the adaptation of harmony. Our work here is to create modern Breton music, but a modern sound that remains firmly attached to ancestral local forms. These ancestral forms are still used by kan ha diskan singers in the region, but they have never been integrated into orchestral music before."

For those not completely au fait with music history, suffice it to say that modal music uses different scales to the ones prevalent in Western music today. In Europe, the majority of music was actually modal up until the 16^th or 17^th centuries. But the development of harmony gradually ousted all other forms of music. Modal forms still exist, however, in certain regions where folk traditions are still alive (such as Brittany, Occitanie, Corsica, northern Spain and Sardinia). But they are especially prevalent in Oriental music from the Mediterranean and the Middle East.

This is, no doubt, why the Algerian ‘ud-player Mehdi Haddab, feels so at home with Breton sounds. "Given that this musical universe is not tempered in any way, as an ‘ud-player I instantly understand the different degree of the notes. What’s more, Erik really wants to push the Breton musicians to break out of certain Western forms of rhythm that can be a bit offputting. And that means I get to learn different Breton modes than the ones I’ve known up to now. This is a real process of exchange." Marchand agrees, adding that a multicultural element is necessary to this exchange. Like the ‘ud culture which extends all the way from Mauritania to Yemen, the musicians in the "KBA" orchestra are expected to open themselves to the widest possible horizons.

"Exciting but exhausting"

But one of the biggest challenges facing these young musicians, not all of whom are familiar with a modal approach, is to get used to the new sounds of their instruments. To produce three quarters of the tones used in traditional Breton music, new frets have had to be added to guitars and supplementary keys fitted to flutes and harps. The musicians in the second "KBA" have also had to train their ears to this new style of playing – an experience which many of them admit has been "exciting but exhausting!"

In the space of just three days, working from the traditional gwerz selected by Erik Marchand, the orchestra manage to create three original pieces. Although they obviously still require a good deal of rehearsal, the orchestra can justly be proud of them, inspired as they are by Mehdi Haddab’s furious rhythms, the stories of love and virtue recounted in the traditional gwerz and the talent of the twelve young musicians involved. Watch out for the Kreiz Breizh Akadémi 2 on the road some time in 2008!

Eglantine Chabasseur