7:38 p.m. by Dolores CHARLES
Last weekend to enjoy the activities of the Interceltic Festival of Lorient (56), which ends on Sunday August 14th. Focus on the oral heritage of Brittany, which the Dastum association wishes to promote.
The Lorient Interceltic Festival continues until Sunday August 14th. Launched 8 days ago (August 5), the FIL expected to welcome up to 750,000 festival-goers throughout the duration of the event to enjoy the hundreds of activities, concerts and shows. In this program, there is in particular a Festday organized by the Breton association Dastum, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. The association has been collecting the oral heritage of historical Brittany for five decades. The explanations of the vice-president of the association, Roland Brou, with Elouen Rouchy:
“Collecting means saving as many songs and music as possible from what is called the Breton oral tradition. It is lost if it is no longer practiced. The idea in 1972 was to seek in the memory of the oldest what might be saved, with the idea of spreading it as much as possible. so that this music is still played and sung 50 years later and in the centuries to come.”
Credit: Elouen Rouchy
Alvan and Ahez guests
To celebrate its anniversary, several groups were invited, of all ages, of all styles, including the two singers of the Breton group Alvan & Ahezrepresenting France in the last Eurovision Song Contest 2022. For Vice-President Roland Brou: “the festival invited us as Dastum to celebrate the anniversary of the association. We invited 8 ensembles, duos and trios, even a quintet, which are representative of what Breton music is today. There will be old, very young, a couple of singers in their twenties who will be there… and next door, we will have a 70-year-old soner who will play with a young man he trained. .. always with the idea of highlighting the transmission.”
The feast day is organized this Saturday in the Carnot room, in Lorient from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Credit: Elouen Rouchy
Music to Locmiquélic
The festival delights young and old, lovers of traditional Breton and Celtic music, but for some inhabitants of the surrounding towns, there is a lack of events outside of Lorient. This is the observation of Iwan, a high school student who decided, in agreement with the town hall of his commune, to organize concerts all week long at the port of Locmiquélic:
“Precisely, I found it a shame that everything is in Lorient and that there is no activity in the port of Locmiquélic for example. With friends we thought we were going to play there to liven up the whole port and make people happy. For some time, it has become a place where lots of people come because it’s easier to park your car and take the boat… there are lots of people passing by. Since nothing ever happened, I didn’t know if they were going to accept the fact that we were playing. But it does and it’s cool…”
Credit: Elouen Rouchy
