YANN-FANCH KEMENER -- singer

YFK, the best performer of the "gwerz" tradition, "golden voice" of Breton music and one of the finest voices in France, was introduced to the vocal music of Brittany by his mother's lullabies. For quite a few years now he has been unanimously acknowledged as an authority on music and singing.

Along with a handful of enthusiasts and scholars, as early as the 1970s, YFK used to collect songs and folk tales from the elders, eager to hand down a cultural heritage that was then threatened with extinction and oblivion.

As he had also been initiated, both orally and a cappella, to the vocal techniques of "fest-noz" singers, YFK travelled up and down Brittany, performing in towns and countryside, thanks to the renewed interest of the time in traditional music and folk songs.

   His early recordings date back to that period: nursery rhymes, Kan ha diskan (songs for 2 alternating voices), gwerz (epic tales), soniou (occasional songs). Altogether about twenty albums since 1975.

Already a leading singer of gwerzioù, as his art matured, he went into a partnership with a classically trained pianist and jazz performer, Didier Squiban: they set up a duet which performed continuously and successfully, with such recordings as Enez Eusa (Diapason d'or award in 1996) and Ile-Exil (awarded ffff top rating by Télérama magazine).

He then took part in "l'Héritage des Celtes", a recording that celebrated the homeland, the islands and legends from Brittany (Dan Ar Bras-- Golden record-- Grand Prix de l'Eurovision).

In 2000, YFK started a fruitful collaboration with Aldo Ripoche, the classical cellist from the Stradivaria ensemble. This gave birth to a first recording: "l'Heure Bleue" (An Eur Glas), which brings together for the first time a Breton voice and and an instrument from the classical repertoire.