Breton Celtic harp legend Alan Stivell's latest album, 'Emerald', is going to be released on October 22nd. You can already download the album's first track from Itunes: "Brittany - Ar bleizi mor".
I first blogged about Alan in my article about the history of the lever harp in Brittany. He is one of the most famous performers of Celtic music in Brittany, on the harp, but also throughout the world. One of the most influential players in the Celtic Revival movement (the resurgence of interest in Celtic music in the 1970s, which continues to this day), Alan's fusion of traditional music with countless other genres is both tireless and remarkable. You will hear Celtic rock, Breton rock, electro rock, hip-hop, even Indian ragas, all putting the music of Alan's native Breton culture onto the international map, and always finding new, modern voices. Alan is also the father of the electroharp, as you can read about here.
Camac's Stivell harp.
Alan's success is big-time, for a harpist almost unimaginably big-time. He has recorded twenty-three albums, some of which have sold over two million copies; gives concerts before as many as fourteen thousand people; goes on tours where he sells up to a thousand discs a day. This success is also enduring. Most cross-over music burns out fast because it is fundamentally dishonest: a string quartet trying to be Madonna is trying to be something it isn't, and it works no better than would Madonna unplugged at the Wigmore Hall. But Alan has a sincere passion for the cultural identities at the heart of all the styles he explores, and even when rocking out across the largest stadiums, his music has the wild and mysterious atmosphere of Brittany, Scotland, Ireland and other Celtic lands.
One of music's most exhilarating aspects must be its ability to draw you into other cultures. It's exhilarating in the same way learning a language is - linguists don't learn new languages in order to ask where the station is, but to discover new ways of thinking and feeling. The moment learning all the verb tables becomes worthwhile is the first time you learn a word that describes something better than anything you knew before. Language, art, music and indeed all forms of cultural expression are doors to new worlds before you.
Alan Stivell timeline - read Harpblog's other articles here and here, and his own book, to find out more!
1953: Alan's father, Georges Cochevelou, finished building a Breton harp, which his son would come to play: a key moment in the history of the Celtic harp revival.
Alan gave his first performances in November 1953 and 1954. These inspired many others to take up the harp! By the end of the 1950s, it was clear that the Celtic harp was galloping back to Brittany.
Between 1959 and 1964, Alan made his first recordings (the first harp recordings in Brittany) on the harp his father had built: Telenn geltiek / harpe celtique. These are available on CD.
1964: Alan acquired a new bardic harp, strung with wire, and began singing as well as playing.
He added pickups and electronic effects pedals, and created his first electro-acoustic harp in 1975, first electric harp in 1979, and a first exploration into MIDI technology in 1987.
In 1971, his "Renaissance de la harpe celtique" album was a hit across the world. It is probably the highest-selling harp disc, and is one of the reasons why Alan acquired a large audience - also through television. The other reason was his original approach to the harp and to Celtic music.
Two other albums where the harp features particularly strongly are "Harpes du nouvel âge" (1985) et "Au-delà des mots / Beyond Words" (2002).
