Rond De Loudéac reel

From Merry Sisters of Fate. This is the one tune I would ‘borrow’ from Lunasa, if I could borrow only one. Mostly it’s just fun to play on whistle. This is the bare-bones version, there’s lots of room to play.

This "Rond de Loud

Thank you! I’ll look into those groups, I would like to learn more… sorry about the spelling error.

Cheers!

Is it true this tune has only 15 bars - most of the breton tunes have multiples of 8 bars as well as the irish tunes.
Otherwise the dancer’s figures get a bit confusing….

Urs

I checked the lunasa version on CD and the version above is following very well it. So lunasa plays 15 bars - but that’s not very original….

Yeah, the 15 bars only is getting really tricky when going into the next tune on Lunasa’s recording. 😏

French: Rond de Loudéac
Breton: Rond Loudia (or simply Loudia)

The Rond de Loudéac is not a reel. It is indeed in 4/4, not unlike our hornpipes, which are also not reels. The dance has an underlying accent on 3 (one - two - THREE - four) in which the dancers stomp their feet on the 3rd beat. When it is performed as a “Suite du Rond de Loudéac” (a “set” of dances), there is a slow part in the middle and at the end (fast-slow-fast-slow), which is the way it is pretty much always played in Brittany. Many Breton tunes are in 4/4 such as the An dro, Plinn, Ridées (some), etc. but all have different accents and tempos and their own unique phrasing.

Listen to the first cut on Kornog’s ‘Premiere’ for proper styling. As great as they are, I highly recommend NOT referencing Lunasa or Old Blind Dog’s version of the Rond de Loudéac for determining the proper style. In these cases, they do indeed sound like reels.

This is the last tune in a set of three on track 3 of Christian LeMaitre’s excellent album Ballade à l’Hôtesse. This is probably the recording that Lunasa learned the tune from, complete with the seven-bar B-part. Also on this recording is Christian’s own tune Tana which Lunasa recorded on Redwood.