The Celtic circles created before the Second World War had very wide cultural objectives, including the literature, the theater, the songs, the choral singing, the plastic arts and the learning and the practice of the Breton language, but not always the music and the dance of Brittany. However, those after 1945 generally restricted their scope and concern themselves with collecting, studying, transmitting and disseminating arts and the popular traditions in Brittany, in particular the Breton dances by occurring on stage with amateur status: performances and compositions created will go in this direction.
There are between 200 and 300, most of which are located in Brittany, but there are also many in cities where Breton communities are found in France, Guadeloupe, New York City, and Beijing. There are two large federations, who organize competitions, Kendalc'h and War'l Leur. The circles and festival of the city of Quimper are very well known.
Celtic music is a broad grouping of music genres that evolved out of the folk music traditions of the Celtic people of Northwestern Europe. It refers to both orally-transmitted traditional music and recorded music and the styles vary considerably to include everything from traditional music to a wide range of hybrids.
Brittany is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica during the period of Roman occupation. It became an independent kingdom and then a duchy before being united with the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province governed as a separate nation under the crown. Brittany is the traditional homeland of the Breton people and is one of the six Celtic nations, retaining a distinct cultural identity that reflects its history.
Brittany is the westernmost region of Metropolitan France. It covers about four fifths of the territory of the historic province of Brittany. It is one of two regions in Metropolitan France that do not contain any landlocked departments, the other being Corsica.
Since the early 1970s, Brittany has experienced a tremendous revival of its folk music. Along with flourishing traditional forms such as the bombard-biniou pair and fest-noz ensembles incorporating other additional instruments, it has also branched out into numerous subgenres.
Alan Stivell is a Breton and Celtic musician and singer, songwriter, recording artist, and master of the Celtic harp. From the early 1970s, he revived global interest in the Celtic harp and Celtic music as part of world music. As a bagpiper and bombard player, he modernized traditional Breton music and singing in the Breton language. A precursor of Celtic rock, he is inspired by the union of the Celtic cultures and is a keeper of the Breton culture.
Pan-Celticism, also known as Celticism or Celtic nationalism is a political, social and cultural movement advocating solidarity and cooperation between Celtic nations and the modern Celts in Northwestern Europe. Some pan-Celtic organisations advocate the Celtic nations seceding from the United Kingdom and France and forming their own separate federal state together, while others simply advocate very close cooperation between independent sovereign Celtic nations, in the form of Breton, Cornish, Irish, Manx, Scottish, and Welsh nationalism.
Daniel Le Bras, known by his stage name Dan Ar Braz, is a Breton guitarist-singer-composer and the founder of L'Héritage des Celtes, a 50-piece Pan-Celt band. As a leading guitarist in Celtic music band, he recorded as a soloist with Celtic harp player Alan Stivell. He also represented France in the Eurovision Song Contest 1996.
Gouren is a style of folk wrestling which has been established in Brittany for several centuries. It is practiced mainly in Brittany, but also in some neighboring regions, in particular through international meetings organized by the FILC, for example in Cornwall, in Scotland and a Gouren skol has opened in New Orleans, in the United States.
The Bretons are an ethnic group native to Brittany, north-western France. They trace their heritage to groups of Brittonic speakers who emigrated from southwestern Great Britain, particularly Cornwall and Devon, mostly during the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain. They migrated in waves from the 3rd to 9th century into Armorica, which was subsequently named Brittany after them.
The Festival interceltique de Lorient (French), Emvod Ar Gelted An Oriant (Breton) or Inter-Celtic Festival of Lorient in English, is an annual Celtic festival, located in the city of Lorient, Brittany, France. It was founded in 1971 by Polig Monjarret.
Léon Fleuriot was a French linguist and Celtic scholar, specializing in Celtic languages and the history of Gallo-Roman and Early Medieval Brittany.
Breton dance is a group of traditional dance forms originating in Brittany, the Celtic region of France. The dance has experienced a reappropriation in the late 1950s, with the development of the Celtic Circles and Fest Noz.
Renaissance de la Harpe Celtique or Renaissance of the Celtic Harp is a 1972 record album by the Breton master of the Celtic harp Alan Stivell that revolutionised the connection between traditional folk music, modern rock music and world music.
Jacques Cambry was a Breton writer and expert in Celtic France. An early proponent of what came to be called Celtomania, he was the founder of the Celtic Academy, the forerunner of the Societé des Antiquaires de France. In addition, he is still honored as the "inventor" of the Oise département and praised for his contributions to the regional Breton identity as well as the national identity of post-Revolutionary France.
The Bleuniadur Ensemble is a Breton ballet of music and dance, founded in Saint-Pol-de-Léon in 1978. Bleuniadur means "blossom" in the Breton language. The word exactly describes the dynamic movement of the flower when it opens ("flowering").
Kevrenn Alre is a group of music and dance of Breton traditional inspiration, created in 1951, by railroad employees of the marshalling yard of Auray.
Kendalc'h, is a confederacy of Celtic circles formed late 1950 in Quimper (Brittany). Kendalc'h promotes the Breton culture by means of the popular arts, based on eight radiuses of action: dance, costume, stage, street, youth, formation, music and publishing. It counts 180 Breton associations today, approximately 13,000 members, working in the domains of the Breton dance and the choral singing in Breton language. The other confederacy of Circles in Brittany is War'l Leur.
War'l Leur is a confederacy of Celtic circles established in late 1967. Other confederacy in Brittany is Kendalc'h. The association gathers a large number of groups of Breton traditional dance which propose shows and animations throughout the Brittany region, in particular in summer, but also elsewhere in France, Europe and abroad.
Kerlenn Pondi is a traditional Breton music group comprising a bagad and a Celtic circle. It was founded in Pontivy, Morbihan, in 1953 based on two older groups, the Garde Saint-Ivy and the "Moutons Blancs". It inherited the name of the latter association as its nickname, due to the woolly color and texture of the region's costumes.
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