I made a mix for NTS full of drony trad-inspired French music
One hour of awesome tracks with hurdy-gurdies and bagpipes
Hello, I’m very happy to announce that I made a one-hour mix for the NTS Supporter Radio program. It’s awesome and it’s heavily related to my obsession over the current experimental music scene inspired by the French traditional repertoire. I’m quite proud of it and I wanted to explain how it came to be.
You can listen to it on Soundcloud for a better player or directly on NTS website where you can see that all the tracks are linked to their Bandcamp pages so you can actually purchased the records they are from. I encourage you to support those artists.
NTS Radio is a music platform based in London that has quickly become an international haven for niche music lovers. Far from the Spotify algorithm, every show or mix is made by a human, mostly artists and DJs. The supporter radio is a scheme from NTS offering the chance for fans like me to submit a one-hour mix to be broadcasted and streamed on the platform. I have been waiting for a long time for a new iteration of their “specialist subject” submission theme as I knew I had a good idea for a mix.
The goal was to offer a playlist of current music inspired by traditional roots. I wanted to focus on French, mostly Occitan-inspired, drony traditional music because I felt that was the strongest offering I could do.
But the catch is: in order to be cool, I wanted it to sound like it was made by electronic instruments even though most of the sounds are made with acoustic ones. Some of the bands (like Cromorne and Super Parquet) have synthesizers in their set up, but the majority of the instruments are violins, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies, percussions, guitars and other old acoustic stuff.
Bumblebee
The name of the mix Bourdon comes from an ancient word for drone in English. Even if the word drone is commonly used as it is in French for electronic and experimental music, the musical term bourdon still refers to the continuous and intricate sounds of church bells, hurdy-gurdies or bagpipes. Bourdon is also the translated name of the bumblebee which is unrelated to the music but not irrelevant to the picture I chose to illustrate the mix.
On Bourdon, there are songs from artists featured on labels and collectives I’ve already talked about on here: the Massif Central’s collective La Nòvia, the record label Pagans based in Pau, the Swiss record label Bongo Joe and the younger collective L’Engeance from Dijon.
You already know most of the bands presented on this mix because I interviewed almost half of them for The Locomotion podcast and I already mentioned most of them on I Only Listen to French Music. So you can be sure the Specialist Subject guidelines were respected on my part.
An introduction to the new wave of trad’ musicians
This mix is build as an introduction to drony trad-inspired French music. So, of course the fanatics are going to know most of the bands in there. There’s no secret bands or unknown musicians here. And the only unreleased track is a live session by bagpipe wizard Craze available on Youtube.
I want to emphasize that it’s not only a playlist: the transitions are well crafted as most of those songs would have been way too long to be featured in their entirety. Here’s the full tracklist:
La Preyra - Réveillez-vous fidèles voici le temps
Meril Wubslin - La traversée
Bòsc - La bergère
D’En Haut - Dens la capèra
Sourdurent - Le Tonnerre / Marche de Palladuc
La Ruche - Tebsima
Tanz Mein Herz - Tales from the middle of the night
François Robin & Mathias Delplanque - Perdu
Craze - Trêve
Toad - Polka à Mouret / L’amor de la bicòta
Super Parquet - 4 chaussures
Cromorne - Omorfoula
La Tène - La Taillée
Cocanha - Que son aüros
Roland Cristal - La rivière pomme de pierre (feat. Jardino)
The mix starts with one of my favorite songs in the genre: a beautiful religious anthem from La Preyra with a simple voice over a continuous drone on a small bagpipe.
The next 20 minutes unfold gradually, moving from shorter songs in French and Occitan to longer pieces where layered drones steadily intensify, culminating in the mix’s centerpiece: a fully instrumental 30-minute stretch in which synthesizer and hurdy-gurdy drones collide in hypnotic trances.
The last 5 minutes are a return to form with a pop song from one of my favorite bands Cocanha and an uptempo electronic collab between jokester Roland Cristal and the vocal trio Jardino that I felt was going to transition smoothly into NTS normal programming, if there is such a thing.
The rejects
I knew pretty fast I wanted to focus on French bands (with the one exception of Belgian-Swiss trio of Meril Wubslin) to respect the specialist subject theme. Even though I’m very fond of the drony sounds of Lankum, Brìghde Chaimbeul or Shovel Dance Collective I didn’t include any of them in the shortlist. I feel like other people may have a better take on a specialist subject centered on music from the British Isles.
I’m thinking about doing another one centered on polyphony so I didn’t use any of the Occitan choirs like Barrut, la Mal-Coiffée or San Salvador. And maybe one day I’ll try to include Brama or France in an episode focused on regional rock music. Sorry to all those bands, you’re still pretty cool.
Dear reader, I realize I haven’t written to you in a while. I’m mostly focusing on radio shows in French (listen to Mappemonde on all the platforms if you can bear our bad jokes) but I will be back here once I finished my four-year run with The Locomotion at the end of the season.