Music of Gascony

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Music of France
Styles	classical - folk - popular: hip hop - jazz - rock
History (Timeline and Samples)
Awards	NRJ Music Awards - Victoires de la musique
Charts	IFOP
Festivals	Printemps de Bourges
Media
National anthem	"La Marseillaise"
Regional music
Alsace - Auvergne - Aquitaine - Pays Basque - Béarn - Brittany - Burgundy - Corsica - Gascony - Languedoc - Limousin - Lorraine - Picardy - Poitou - Provence - Rousillon
Overseas music
French Guiana - French Polynesia - Martinique and Guadeloupe - Mayotte - New Caledonia - Réunion - St. Pierre and Miquelon - Tahiti - Wallis and Futuna

Gascony is a region of France that has produced several well-known performers and composers of classical, folk and popular music. Gascony is home to several major music festivals. In modern days, the town of Merciac is home to an annual jazz festival, one of the biggest in France. The town of Mirande is also home to an annual festival (Le Country Musique), devoted to country music.

[edit] Folk music

Gascon folk music is known for a kind of small pipes called boha, which have a rectangular chanter and drone combination, (this form is unique to Gascony), and are made out of sheepskin with the fleece showing. The wandering performers known as troubadours and jongleurs were well-established in Gascony.

Gascony, like many regions of France, and elsewhere in Europe, underwent a roots revival in the early to mid 1970s. The beginning of this trend in Gacony can be traced to the release of Musique Traditionelle de Gascogne by Perlinpinpin Folc, a band formed in 1972 and led by Christian Lamau.

Some twenty years late, this revival continued with the repopularization of pastorales, an ancient form of musical theater. There is also a modern style, inspired by the jongleurs and troubadours of the region's history, called rappadoc, which uses various lyrical styles in satirical and topical performance.

Modern traditionally-styled bands from Gascony include Verd e Bleu.