Legend has it, supported by his own reports, that Jean Blanchard bought his first bagpipes in an antique shop in Lyon. It was a bag Béchonnet built in 1871 which, contrary to what was common, was not played with a bagpipe (a bellows very similar to fireplace bellows, which is used to fill the other bellows), but with a soprete (a tube that allows the bellows to be filled directly with the mouth, as is common in most bagpipes).
I don’t know if it was with this bag Béchonnet that Jean Blanchard composed The Ladybug (the ladybug, like the insect), but I want to believe so. It’s a stuffed three-beat dance (a traditional French dance) that makes dancers want to jump and slide, like almost all dances. stuffed. But this one really suggests that we are ladybugs on a spring afternoon, being carried by the wind. It appears that Jean Blanchard abuses the technique known as rappelwhich consists of playing the tonic of that song (which in this case is a G) between each of the notes of the melody. The final effect is a kind of spectral polyphony, as if two instruments were playing simultaneously, when they weren’t. I’m glad he composed it and we can jump when we hear it. Especially because it will hardly fall into oblivion, taking into account that the The Ladybug it continues to be played by other musicians, such as accordionists Andy Cutting and Anne Niepold.
But Jean Blanchard is vast. He founded the band La Bamboche in 1972, together with Bernard Blanc – another specialist in bagpipes. The photographs on the album covers refer to a glorious period of recent freedom (at the time), with long hair and beards, which Jean Blanchard maintained as his trademark. There are bell-bottoms and old music, of rural origin, which at that time was being reinvented and which was a symbol of urban culture. This is the advent of folk in France, just as it was in Portugal with so many musicians, such as José Afonso, Fausto, José Mário Branco and Júlio Pereira, among others.
Jean Blanchard was active until the last moment and went through musical formations such as the Merle Rouge trio, where, with Gwenaëlle Pineau, on concertina, and Laurence Dupré, on violin, he recreated the musical tradition of Auvergne.
In Auvergnatus, the musical tradition of that French region reaches another level, with Jean Blanchard dedicating himself to the tenor banjo, remaining cabrette (another French bagpipe) by Fabrice Lenormand.
Basically, Jean Blanchard is simultaneously heir and transmitter of an ancestral musical practice in a country that has more bagpipes, with different morphologies, than any other (yes, this is where I reveal that bagpipes were not invented in Scotland; they also exist in Portugal and in any country between India and North Africa, despite the greatest variety occurring in France). The musician died, but did not disappear.