ANGE B :
Human Juke Box from Toulouse, vocal rythmist, chaterring MC, programmer, pandeiro and nose-flute player …After scientific studies in chemistry, this hip hop and traditional musics enthusiast fan founded with Claude Sicre the Fabulous Trobadors (since 1988). The band becomes famous in France for having made up, togeteher with several hits, reflexions and actions concerning civic changes and new ways of socializing in the french society ( the « neighborhood meals », « forum of languages », et..). In 1992, he also founded a hiphop band called « bouducon production », and started all-terrain encounters and featuring with many bands of all styles of musics : Massilia Sound System, Compagnie Bernard Lubat, Asian Dub Foundation, Femmouzes T, Chico Cesar, Gacha Empega, Lenine, Jam Session, Sidilarsen, lo Còr de la Plana, Bumcello, Alif Sound System, Samarabalouf, Captain Slam, B'net Houariyat…
Ange brilliantly uses other vocal registers, combining his talents of MC, instrument imitator, author and mood maker.
CLÉMENT GAUTHIER :
Threw « Rivages » association in the Cevennes mountains, Clément Gauthier rediscovered in the early 2000’s folk and traditional musics and dances. This education led him to study other artistic expressions with instrument makers, professional dancers and various instrument players.
His instrument pratice focuses noy only on central France bagpipes and drone musics and instruments (such as chabrette and boudegue), but also approaches the study of oblique flutes like Kaval, Kawalleh, Ney. He also got fascinated by learning medeiterranean singing, observing and training all specificities both of Occitan language territories (southern France), or Egypt, as he also is an archeologist of ancient Egypt. He founded in 2012 Jericho, a band dedicated to the repertoire of old occitan songs in a vast project of designing these musical themes into contemporary ways of composition.
HENRI MAQUET :
Musician and instrument maker, his enthusiasm for electronic devices, games and instruments, Henri Maquet is an inventor of musical forms and constructions. He plays and builts several types of instruments (from flutes to archaic clarinets, violin, guitaron) and is also a singer. He creates musical instruments out of « sagnes » and « canes », the specific reed woods from his regionProvence : galoubet, pipes of all kinds, minions and blowpipes, he laureates in ethnomusicology in AIx-en-Provence. He also works since 1998 with Gaël Hemery (« chants et musiques de Provence »), Joan Maria Carlotti (Mont-Jòia, Noëls de Provence), and several music ensemble such as « duo maquet-Bachevalier », and develops personal projects that incorporate both his passions for elecronics and instrument making in projects like « Balpoptronic », Butor Stelaris », « Delta Sònic » or « Acousmatic Oc »
MANU THÉRON :
Born in 1969, raised between Algeria and Marseilles, he studied piano since age 7 and learnt singing either with choirs or together with his grand mother. Discovered Occitan language and poetry aged 18, then got involved in the occitan revival movement. In southern italy as well as in Bulgaria, Manu Theron travelled more than 4 years, discovering traditional singing and polyphony and, most of all, getting along with singers and choirs, learning from them listenning diciplin and musical behaviour in a singing collective. How to keep up cultural and social practices linked to language issues through singing, how to develop connections with dialectal oral litterature, how to ignore official folklore institutions, that transform lively practices into museum curiosities ? Here are a few obsessions that came out as a result of all these encounters and thoughts.Back in Marseilles in 1995, Manu Théron then decided to dedicate his life to occitan singing and music. In 1995 Manu starts a vocal trio called « Gacha Empega », very quicly known all around the France for its incredibly punky vocal performances, and founds 4 years later his polyphonic ensemble « Lo Còr de la Plana », that started performing throughout Europe and a few other continents, won several prices, and discoverd the relevance of sharing this new conception of polyphonic singing with as many people as they could. Passionate and active, Manu Théron’s performances and teachings are inspired by popular mediterranean singing, and often require frame percussions together with a strongly expressive vocal presence.
