Yves Menez?

Cuimean

Anyone ever heard of Yves Menez? Apparently, he was an accordionist from Brittany (in Northern France) who, in the 1940's, had a band that played "gavotte swing," a combination of Breton folk and jazz. I've heard a contemporary sax/bombarde player named Roland Becker who has a couple of bands that play in a similar style, but attempts to turn up Menez's recordings have been fruitless. Can anyone here help?

Ando

No, but you get the prize (a small, injection-molded plastic hedgehog) for most outre' music request.

Roland Becker is GREAT. I hope, in person, he's like some beer-swilling Falstaff who suddenly stands up at a table, mouth full of food, and starts ranting about something totally esoteric, like the superiority of twelfth-century troubadour melodies to those of their northern confreres, the trouveres. That, and his sleeve is greasy and smells like garlic and old port.

God, to be independently wealthy and free. What a world there is to explore!

Cuimean

Ando wrote:

No, but you get the prize (a small, injection-molded plastic hedgehog) for most outre' music request.

The internet is a wonderful thing. Any time I start imagining weird musical forms, I just Google a bunch of key words and more often than not, I find someone somewhere in the world who's had the same idea. Musette + Punk...Django + Waits + Piazzolla...gavotte + swing...and so on. It's really nice to know that there's so much music out there to explore.

And Roland Becker IS great. His accordionist, Régis Huiban, has his own jazz group which I'm itching to hear. I just spent a bunch of cash having shirts made up for my band, but when I recover financially, I think I'll order his CD from FNAC.

Cuimean

If anyone was curious about this stuff, I'd like to strongly recommend two CDs:

Swing Noz by Jean-Louis Le Vallegant and Patrick Lefebvre: Really excellent gavotte swing played on accordion and sax. Some tracks have drums and tuba as well. Beautiful playing and fascinating tunes.

http://www.coop-breizh.com/vitrine/fich ... id=4014292

Sans-Sommeil by Régis Huiban: More gavotte jazz, but with a more modern flavor. Huiban plays accordion, and his band includes electric guitar, drums, and contrabass. A few horn players sit in on a couple of songs. There are a few more "out" moments than on the Le Vallegant/Lefebvre and Roland Becker stuff, but don't let that scare you away; it's all still very melodic.

http://www.coop-breizh.com/vitrine/fich ... id=4014427

They're both also available through FNAC.com.

Again, this has almost nothing to do with Django. I just see this stuff as a weird convergent evolutionary footnote to musette, which similarly started with another form of French folk music.

Cuimean

Looks like Roland Becker put up a Myspace page for Yves Menez:

http://www.myspace.com/yvesmenez

The pictures on this page are pretty amazing. I'd love to hear some of these bands.

Any Francophones available to translate some (or all) of this page?

bengomez

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