Nolwenn Leroy: Bretonne triumphs

Traditional songs make surprise hits

Paris 

26/01/2011 - 

With a collection of classic numbers sung in Breton, French and English, Nolwenn is once more enjoying the taste of success after the pop intermission of her previous album.

It may be a well-known fact that Nolwenn Leroy is from Brittany, but no one could have imagined the shock of Bretonne. Her fourth album, featuring major classics from or inspired by Brittany, is in the process of becoming one of the biggest record successes of the season.

Unexpected turning

Even though the photo on the cover shows five-year-old Nolwenn in traditional costume, the singer has never really pushed her Breton side. Since winning the second Star Academy in 2002, she has always made a point of turning up where least expected. Her second album, Histoires naturelles, written and produced with Laurent Voulzy, brought her artistic credibility along with commercial success, while the third, Le Cheshire Cat et moi, produced with the craftsman of Scandinavian pop, Teitur, had trouble reaching a wide audience.

She claims she had been thinking of plunging into a Celtic repertoire for some time. Not such a surprising move for a native of the French equivalent of Land’s End, Finistère, but few can have imagined hearing her sing Tri Martelod, the classic Breton song by Alan Stivell, or Bro gozh va zadoù, Brittany’s “national anthem”.

Number one

As soon as the album hit the shelves in early December, sales were encouraging: 8^th best seller during the first week, 6^th the next … until it reached number one during the week of 8 January. The hit turned into a phenomenon and the French national press started to write about the figures: 250,000 copies sold at the last reckoning a few days ago, and it seems unlikely to stay put once it has reached double platinum level.

Yet, despite a few acerbic remarks here and there about the obviousness of the success, it is a surprise to most. A surprise that can be explained, but that remains exceptional in the context of a depressed music market. For a comparison, you’d probably have to go back to the thousands of copies sold between 1994 and 1998 of the four albums by Dan Ar Braz and l’Héritage des Celtes. 

Trad modern

The fact that Nolwenn Leroy made her first appearance in a TV reality show exposes her to the kind of harsh comments that Dan Ar Braz was sheltered from during the years spent close to Alan Stivell and performing in small Celtic music cabarets on both sides of the English Channel. Yet the way the public has been won over is comparable: in the space of a single album, some great classics presented in a palette of sounds and forms that touch the uninitiated as well as informed listeners who don’t claim to be Celtic music specialists. 

In fact, Nolwenn Leroy was intending to produce more of a pop album than a “trad” album, since she called on the services of Jon Kelly, who had previously worked with people like Kate Bush, Duffy and Paul McCartney. The repertoire is not only given over to traditional ditties in Breton and French – she has also chosen to interpret songs that evoke Brittany, like Brest by Miossec (2004), Ma Bretagne quand il pleut by Jean-Michel Caradec (1977) and Le Bagad de Lann Bihoué by Alain Souchon (1978), and asked two contemporary Bretons, Christophe Miossec and Didier Squiban, to write her a new song to express how attached she is to her homeland, Je ne serai jamais ta Parisienne (I’ll never be your Parisian girl).

With touches of traditional Celtic instruments, and an omnipresent warm, romantic voice, Bretonne is both linked to regional culture and firmly in line with the sounds of present-day pop. Bretonne is certainly Breton, and sometimes sung in the language of the land, but it is above all French chanson. And it is doubtlessly the way it straddles the two cultures that gives it so much charm.

Nolwenn Leroy Bretonne (Mercury-Universal) 2010

Bertrand  Dicale

Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper