Emmanuelle Parrenin is a French folk singer, harpist and hurdy-gurdy player who was first active in the late 1960s and 1970s as part of "le mouvement folk".
Emmanuelle Parrenin is a French folk singer, harpist and hurdy-gurdy player who was first active in the late 1960s and 1970s as part of "le mouvement folk".
Parrenin was born into a family steeped in classical music: her mother played the harp and her father the violin, and studied ballet as child. [1] She attended a Catholic boarding school but was expelled. [2] She expanded her musical horizons during her teenage years, and was influenced by meeting Eric Clapton and The Yardbirds, during a visit to England while a teenager. [3]
At age 19, she met the hurdy-gurdy player Christian Leroy Gour'han, [4] René Zosso , and Alan Stivell at Le Bourbon folk club. [1] [3] The instrument itself made a deep impression on her and made her determined to learn how to perform with it. [2] She and others travelled to remote regions of France and other Francophone countries including Canada to record folksongs. [5] [3] The recordings were donated to the Musée de l'Homme and the Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires. [3]
In 1974 Parrenin released an album with Phil Fromont called "La Maurmariée", [1] developing a "reputation for stark and intelligent interpretations of traditional music." [1]
By the mid-1970s Parrenin had gained a reputation with traditional and folk music. [2] With Fromont and Claude Lefebvre, Parrenin released a second, more progressive, album "Chateau Dans Les Nuages" in 1976, with included "Eastern elements and general strangeness". [1]
Her only solo album, "Maison Rose" was released in 1977. [6] The title refers to the house she grew up in, and the musical influences she imbibed there. The album took "the revived instruments of le mouvement folk out into new territory". [1] Apart from Plume Blanche, Plume Noire by Jean-Claude Vannier, she wrote all the works and developed the album with engineer Bruno Menny. [2] The album was re-released in 2001 and developed an international cult following. [5]
After the album's release, Parrenin moved away from folk music. She later explained "It was a time when, firstly, it [folk music] was becoming very fashionable and there wasn't the same spirit as there had been at the beginning. There was a lot of what we call in France 'un esprit de chapelle'; it was very purist and I don't think I'm like that. I liked it when it felt alive, and when that went I was bored." [3] She began writing music for contemporary dance, including for Carolyn Carlson, [2] and returned to dancing. [1] [3] [5] She also taught herself to play the harp. [3]
By 1981 she had formed a group that included Didier Malherbe of prog rockers Gong. They were a support act for The Clash at Le Zénith arena in Paris in 1981 and did not appreciate the violence of the punk audience. [2]
In 1993, a fire damaged her hearing, and she was no longer able to perform. [3] [7] Told that she had lost her hearing permanently, [6] she moved to the Alps, and as self-therapy she began playing and singing again. [3] As her hearing improved she used the techniques she had learned with others including with people with autism and psychiatric disorders. [3] [7] [5]
In March 2011 Parrenin released a new album, "Maison Cube". in collaboration with singer/songwriter Flóp and Jaumet. [2] The title refers to the cube-shaped house where it was recorded. [3] [7] [5]
In 2019 and 2020 she collaborated with Detlef Weinreich, (who works as the producer Tolouse Low Trax) to produce the album Jours de Grève (Strike Days) inspired by recent French general strikes. [2]
Medieval metal is a subgenre of folk metal that blends heavy metal music with medieval folk music. Medieval metal is mostly restricted to Germany where it is known as Mittelalter-Metal or Mittelalter-Rock. The genre emerged from the middle of the 1990s with contributions from Subway to Sally, In Extremo and Schandmaul. The style is characterised by the prominent use of a wide variety of traditional folk and medieval instruments.
Donovan Phillips Leitch, mononymously known as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter, and record producer. He developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelic rock and world music. He has lived in Scotland, Hertfordshire (England), London, California, and—since at least 2008—in County Cork, Ireland, with his family. Emerging from the British folk scene, Donovan reached fame in the United Kingdom in early 1965 with live performances on the pop TV series Ready Steady Go!.
The hurdy-gurdy is a string instrument that produces sound by a hand-crank-turned, rosined wheel rubbing against the strings. The wheel functions much like a violin bow, and single notes played on the instrument sound similar to those of a violin. Melodies are played on a keyboard that presses tangents—small wedges, typically made of wood—against one or more of the strings to change their pitch. Like most other acoustic stringed instruments, it has a sound board and hollow cavity to make the vibration of the strings audible.
The music of France reflects a diverse array of styles. In the field of classical music, France has produced several prominent romantic composers, while folk and popular music have seen the rise of the chanson and cabaret style. The earliest known sound recording device in the world, the phonautograph, was patented in France by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville in 1857. France is also the 5th largest market by value in the world, and its music industry has produced many internationally renowned artists, especially in the nouvelle chanson and electronic music.
Georges de La Tour was a French Baroque painter, who spent most of his working life in the Duchy of Lorraine, which was temporarily absorbed into France between 1641 and 1648. He painted mostly religious chiaroscuro scenes lit by candlelight.
Hedningarna is a Swedish, and for some years partly Finnish, folk music band that mixes electronics and rock with elements from old Scandinavian folk music. Their music features yoik or juoiggus, a traditional Sami form of song.
Nolwenn Le Magueresse, known by her stage name Nolwenn Leroy, is a French singer-songwriter, musician and actress.
Ad Vielle Que Pourra was a Quebec-based music group which performed original compositions in the style of the French, Québécois, and Breton folk music traditions. The band's name came from the vielle, an instrument which features prominently in their music.
La Musgaña is a Spanish folk music ensemble, founded in 1986 by Enrique Almendros, José María Climent and Rafa Martin. The band incorporates various instruments such as the dulcimer, fiddle, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, flutes, guitar and bass, and performs traditional music from the Iberian peninsula, mostly from the Spanish regions of Castile, Zamora, Leon, Extremadura and La Mancha. La Musgaña means "water-rat" in Spanish.
A Heart in Winter is a French film which was released in 1992. It stars Emmanuelle Béart, Daniel Auteuil and André Dussollier. It was chosen to compete at the 49th Venice International Film Festival, where it won four awards, including tying for the Silver Lion. It was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 1994 BAFTA awards.
Faun is a German band that was formed in 1998 and plays pagan folk, darkwave, and medieval music. The originality of their music style is that it falls back to "old" instruments, and the singing is always the center of attention. The vocals are performed in a variety of languages, including German, English, Latin, Greek, and Scandinavian languages. Their instruments include Celtic harp, Swedish nyckelharpa, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, cittern, flutes, and many others.
The following recordings and films feature music played on the hurdy-gurdy.
Eluveitie is a Swiss folk metal band from Winterthur, Zürich, founded in 2002 by Chrigel Glanzmann. The project's first demo, Vên, was released in 2003. Vên was a studio project of Glanzmann's, but its success led to the recruitment of a full band. The band then released a full-length album, Spirit, in June 2006. In November 2007, Eluveitie was signed by Nuclear Blast. The group rose to fame following the release of their first major-label album, Slania, in February 2008. The album peaked at number 35 in the Swiss charts and number 72 in the German charts.
Anna Katharina Kränzlein, also known as Anna Katharina, is a German violinist. She is most known for her quick and varied technique. She is the youngest founding member of Medieval folk rock/folk metal band Schandmaul.
Dorothy Carter was an American musician. Carter performed contemporary, folk, traditional, medieval, and experimental music with a large collection of stringed instruments such as the hammered dulcimer, zither, psaltery, and hurdy-gurdy. She is regarded as an important figure in the genres of psychedelic folk music and medieval music revival.
Les Charbonniers de l'Enfer are an a cappella folk music group formed in Quebec, Canada, in 1994.
Anna Maria Murphy is a Swiss musician and audio engineer. She was a longtime member of the folk metal band Eluveitie from 2006 until 2016, in which she performed the lead clean vocals and played the hurdy-gurdy and flute. Since her departure from Eluveitie, she has been the lead singer of the progressive metal / progressive folk rock band Cellar Darling.
Ithilien is a Belgian folk metal band from Brussels using traditional folk instruments such as a hurdy gurdy, a bagpipe, a violin, a nyckelharpa, flutes and a bouzouki. They combine elements of metal (death/metalcore) and traditional folk music.
The Hurdy-Gurdy Player is an oil on canvas painting by Georges de La Tour. The artist neither signed nor dated it, but it was produced in the first phase of his career, probably between 1620 and 1625. It is also known as The Hurdy-Gurdy Player in a Hat or The Hurdy-Gurdy Player with a Fly. It is now in the Musée d'Arts de Nantes.
Patricia Büchler, known professionally as Patty Gurdy, is a hurdy-gurdy musician, singer, songwriter and vlogger from Germany.
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