Festival de Cornouaille
The Festival de Cornouaille , also known as Le Cornouaille for short since 2010 and Gouelioù-Meur Kerne in Breton , is a Breton music, dance and culture festival . It takes place annually in July in Quimper (Breton: Kemper ), the capital of the Finistère department , bishopric and center of the historic Cornouaille landscape . First held in 1923, it is the oldest of the great cultural festivals in Brittany. From 1931 to 1946, with the exception of two years, there was a longer period in which the festival did not take place at least on this scale; nevertheless, the organizers describe the festival from 2020 on their website as “97. Output".
history
The beginnings
The festival arose out of a charity event of a young cinema owner from Quimper, Louis Le Bourhis, in December 1922, which he repeated in September 1923 and then annually until 1930 on a larger scale as Fête des Reines ("Festival of the Queens"), with one part the income went to the disabled in the war . The name came from the fact that at this festival a “Queen of Cornouaille” was selected from the circle of local beauty queens - a custom that has persisted into the 21st century.
Even at this time, musical and dance competitions as well as a pageant through the city center were part of the regular program items, including the winners of the queen's election and the traditional brass groups (Sonneurs) with Bombarde and Binioù - as shown in the photo from 1927 (right) some Breton bards , including Théodore Botrel , Francis Gourvil and the neo-Druid François Jaffrennou , attended.
Development after the Second World War
After the Second World War, together with the liberation from German occupation , the festival revived under the name Fêtes de Cornouaille - later with the addition of the Festival des arts et traditions de la Bretagne ("Festival of the Arts and Traditions of Brittany"). In 1947 there was only a festival lasting several hours, but in 1948 there was already a two-day event in which a small delegation from Scotland also took part; the following year the festival even dragged on for six days. In the following years it grew steadily in terms of the number of individual events, the participating musicians, dance and traditional costume groups, and the number of visitors. In 1951 around 2,000 participants were counted; In 1952, the rush of around 100,000 spectators ensured that bread was in short supply in the city's bakeries . This growth developed particularly strongly from the end of the 1960s, when there was a stronger return to the peculiarities and values of the Breton culture throughout Brittany, which was also largely supported by a new generation. During the great musicians' parade ( Grande Assemblée , in Breton Abadenn Veur ) through the city center, which traditionally closes the festival , in 1976 there was an explosive attack on the commercial building of the Banque Nationale de Paris on the march route - carried out by the Front de Liberation de la Bretagne (" Breton Liberation Front ") - which did not claim any victims among the approximately 12,000 spectators at the roadsides.
In 1982 the event took on its name, which is still valid today, as the Festival de Cornouaille. This led to a rift between the organizers, as a result of which Louis Le Bourhis, a grandson of the founder of the festival, announced his withdrawal. The factual background of this renaming was that the proponents hoped for better opportunities for marketing and better chances of government subsidies . In addition, the number of concerts was to be increased and the pageant (Triomphe des Sonneurs) , which had been canceled for four years, was to be given a central place in the program.
Programmatic focus
Until the first half of the 1970s, the musical event program had primarily to singers and instrumental groups such as the Sonneurs and the marching bands , there Bagadou called, concentrated, the traditional, Celtic-Breton songs such as the Gwerzioù or Kan ha Diskan were obliged . That changed with the sudden increase in rock bands who preferred to use electrically amplified instruments ( electric guitar , electric bass , keyboards , plus drums ), but either mastered traditional acoustic instruments themselves or interpreted Breton music in a rocky or jazzy way.
This initial coexistence developed further at this festival in such a way that younger rock musicians and mostly older "musical traditionalists" often performed together, such as the pipe band Bagad Kemper and the punk - ethno- rock fusion Red Cardell - both groups that were in Quimper are at home. The starting point for this musical approach is a joint concert by Fairport Convention with Dan Ar Braz at the 1978 festival.
In the long history of Cornouaille , all the " greats " of Breton music have performed. One of the special features of the Festival de Cornouaille is that it also offers beginners and unknown artists a stage as part of the overall official program. There is free entry to their concerts. For the festival director Igor Gardes, this is one of the unique selling points with which Quimper differentiates itself from the other major cultural festivals in Brittany such as the Festival Interceltique in Lorient , the Vieilles Charrues in Carhaix-Plouguer or the Yaouank in Rennes and at the same time fills a gap:
“The old… left no room for the younger generation. That's why you keep meeting the same musicians. So everything has to be geared towards training and advancement [of the young generation] and giving them back their desire for it. There is enormous potential for this in Brittany, and that is a way of keeping culture alive. "
Organization, funding and venues
The festival is organized by a registered association under French law (association loi de 1901) . It lasts six days again, always ends on the last Sunday in July and attracts around 150,000 visitors to the city of 63,000 (as of 2017). Around 40% of the total income comes from the support of the public authorities (city, municipal association , department, regional council and French state), the rest comes from the sale of tickets - with around three quarters of the events taking place with free admission - and merchandising products as well through sponsorship and advertising partners.
According to the organizers, a total of 130,000 people had already visited the festival in 1994 and bought 75,000 tickets for the individual events; In 1998, the number of visitors even rose to 250,000, which is the previous record for the festival.
Under the festival motto au cœur d'une ville et d'une culture ( "In the heart of a city and the center of a culture") the whole urban area is the stage for performances of various kinds. Concerts, for example, see the Cathedral Saint-Corentin also held like in the Théâtre de la Résistance or the Pavillon de Penvillers as well as in bars and clubs. For open-air events, in addition to the spacious quays of the Odet, the streets and squares around the cathedral are ideal; they are highly frequented in dry weather, especially during the old town nights (Nuits des Vieux Quartiers) and the Festoù-noz - but also in the inner courtyard of the diocesan administration , where a large, public banquet (Cornouaille Gourmand ) was held for the first time in 2013 .
Web links
- Official website of the festival (accessed April 3, 2020)
Notes and evidence
- ↑ see the list of all Reines de Cornouaille at festival-cornouaille.bzh
- ↑ Pascal Lamour: Un monde de musique bretonne. Ed. Ouest-France, Rennes 2018, ISBN 978-2-7373-7898-0 , p. 176
- ↑ a b c d according to the historical overview on festival-cornouaille.bzh
- ^ Jean-Jacques Monnier and Jean-Christophe Cassard (eds.): Toute l'histoire de Bretagne. Des origines à la fin du XXe siècle. Skol Vreizh, Morlaix 2014, 5th edition, ISBN 978-2-915-623-79-6 , pp. 772 ff.
- ↑ Pascal Lamour: Un monde de musique bretonne. Ed. Ouest-France, Rennes 2018, ISBN 978-2-7373-7898-0 , p. 177
- ↑ a b Pascal Lamour: Un monde de musique bretonne. Ed. Ouest-France, Rennes 2018, ISBN 978-2-7373-7898-0 , p. 178