Manau, as yam mentions, is the world's only French Celtic rap group, bringing together an eclectic mix of bagpipes, scratching, modern jazz, and haunting vocals.* The group started in the summer of 1998 and is made up of:
  • Martial Tricoche (leader, vocals)
  • Cédric Soubiron (music, vocals and scratching)
  • Hervé Lardic (various instrumentals, vocals)
  • Gregor Gandon (violin)
The members are from the suburbs of Paris and share a Breton heritage, their families all originally coming from Brittany on the western coast France. This background is where they derive the theme for their music, incorporating bagpipes and flutes with tales of ancient tribes and heroic battles. Their first album, Panique Celtique, features most notably La Tribu de Dana, a haunting piece that tells of a tribe fighting for freedom against immense odds. The French is beautiful, and tells a touching tale of Braveheart power. Martial was reportedly inspired by L'épopée Celte, a book by Jean Markhale in which we find la tribu de Dana, an Irish tribe dedicated to Dana, the daughter of Dagna, an Irish God whom they worship. Contrast this to the title song, Panique Celtique, an upbeat, silly, self-referential song which sounds like a French version of Hip Hop Hooray by Naughty by Nature.

Discography

The titles in boldface are albums, the rest are singles from those albums.

  1. Panique Celtique (1998)
  2. La Tribu de Dana (1998) (single)
  3. Panique Celtique (1998) (single)
  4. Qui est la belette? (1999) (single)
  5. L'avenir est un long passé... (1999) (single)
  6. La confession (1999) (single)
  7. Fest Noz De Paname (2000)
  8. Tout le Monde... (2000) (single)
  9. Fest Noz de Paname (2001) (single)

I would recommend Manau to anybody who likes international music, even if you don't understand French. If you are interested, the lyrics can be translated (albeit badly) by Babelfish, etc. (maybe someday I'll do it myself and post it), though it is certainly unnecessary--the emotion and the beauty of the music really shines through.


*As Gnomatron once said, "my god, I don't think I've ever heard of anything quite so bizarre. And I've heard some bizarre stuff."
Information gleaned from the official Manau website http://www.manaufficiel.com/ and from http://www.manau.com