FESTIVAL DIARY:The Chieftains have been enjoying the famous Breton musical celebration in Lorient for over 30 years, writes Paddy Moloney
"WE'RE STAYING in a gorgeous Breton port called Port Louis, about 20 minutes outside Lorient. We've been playing almost every year at this festival since 1974, although it's been six years since we played here last.
"We used to come here with our families and have the most wonderful times. I can still remember the smell of sardines, cooked by a big giant of a man, a chef and a piper himself, who would cook up these amazing dishes for us.
"The late Polig Monjarret was the godfather of Brittany, and he was responsible in the 1940s and 1950s for reviving the whole Breton scene here. In Ploemeur, just outside Lorient, he built the conservatory for Breton studies.
"He started this festival first in Brest as a piping festival in the mid-1940s. Then he brought it to Lorient and it blossomed from there into the huge event that it is today. It was from Polig that I learned all about the Breton piping tradition: the bombarde and the biniou.
"He had collected more than 6,000 Breton tunes, would you believe, and that was the music we focused on for our 1986 album, Celtic Wedding.
"Our concert is dedicated to Polig's memory, and we've donated €5,000 of our fee towards the erection of a sculpture in a square named after him in Lorient. There's something about this place that's just so exciting. It's like going to a really good New Year's Eve party.
"There's something special about the appreciation that the people here have for the music.
"This year we have our harpist again, Tríona Marshall, whose popularity has gone through the roof. We'll have Alyth McCormack, a Scots Gaelic singer from the island of Lewis, along with two great musicians, Johnny Hardy and Brian McAlpine.
"Polig's daughter Noelwynne will sing a composition of her father's which he composed in 1948, and we'll finish up with a bagade (a Breton pipe band) of 39 biniou and bombarde players and 20 dancers for a Breton dance tune called An Dro.
"The last time we did this was in Carnegie Hall where the dancers wove in and out between the audience, and brought some of them up on stage to join in. For some of them it was a case of 'We've made it - we're in Carnegie Hall!' That's what we hope to do here too!
"I'm only just back from 10 days investigating the Irish association with Mexico which is for our next album, but you know, when I get a vision of what I want to do, I've just got to reach out there and do it."
In conversation withSiobhán Long . The Chieftains play tonight at Lorient's 48th Interceltique Festival. www.festival-interceltique.com