Gilles Servat

Gilles Servat is a French singer, born in Tarbes in southern France in 1945, into a family whose roots lay in the Nantes region of Brittany. He is an ardent promoter ardent of the Breton culture, and sings in both French and Breton, as well as the other celtic languages, and was a member of Dan ar Braz's Héritage des Celtes. He is also a poet and novelist. He spent his early childhood and teenage years around Nantes and Cholet, after his father obtains a position of chief of the personnel at the factory Ernault-Batignolles. During this time, he is influenced by Georges Brassens and Léo Ferré, which shows not only on his writing, but furthermore on his way to think and react to events. After a baccalauréat in literature, he studied sculpture, painting, drawing and engraving at the École régionale des beaux-arts d'Angers, with the goal of becoming a teacher. The rise in popularity of conceptual art made him change his career path. He then spent four years in Angers and two in Paris, where he worked for some months at the ORTF. He started writing in 1967, to be able to express himself freely and create his repertoire. In may 1968, he discovered the Breton political problems after meeting Serge Bihan, from Groix, and makes a parallel with the struggles a friend from Occitania told him about. In an interview published in the magazine Autrement in 1979, he states that Paris allowed the various communities of regional minorities to meet and create links between themselves. In 1969, he stays on the island of Groix to perform there all summer, which became a key moment in his relationship with Brittany. There, he lived with the working class, reads the book Ar en deulin by Yann-Ber Kalloc'h, understood his roots and decided to sing them. He first met Glenmor while performing at Chez Pouzoulic, the café of the island. The famous bard joined him on stage for a few songs and said "Who said bardism was dead?" afterwards. At the end of summer, he came back to Paris for work…

Known for

Acting

Born

1945-02-01 · Tarbes, Hautes-Pyrénées, France