Ceird an Cheoil

For those (like me) who could not come to this first "Harmonica Collective" event...Here is a bit of what we missed :

Clic over me please

And big Merci to justintheseeker

Hopefully such great event with as precious people to happend some time in Europe or even other continent ?

Lucky people from America, I hope you profit from this event ... Website HERE

Vincent Bucher

Vincent Bucher is the prefered french Harmonica player of the african musicians. He is also a very good Blues player and singer, with colors of Africa ...

Vincent is also the Harmonica player of the Heritage Blues Orchestra who has been nominated for a GRAMMY Award for their album "And Still I Rise" in the category of Best Blues Album 2012. The group has also been nominated for two Blues Music Awards 2013 for Best Album and Best Traditional Blues Album...

Here Vincent is playing with Boubacar Traoré, very famous musician artist from Mali  !...

I am an enthusiast of acoustical and electro-acoustical music mainly. I am also learning to play the mandolin in the register of Celtic musics thanks to the Irish association of Paris (France)... The violin, the Didgeridoo and the "Thin Wistle" are other instruments that I would love to learn.

But I am also a harmonica player since 1996, amator, friant of all meetings, practice, Jam sessions, events where the harmonica is often present even central. Rich of all that, I acquired a very good knowledge of this domain, and international network of knowledge.

This instrument proves to be :

1. 1 the most popular though often taken to be a toy and curiously well misread...
2. 2 most sold (more than 1.5 billion since 1820) and curiously so seldom visible...
3. 3 subject to many misconceptions:
   1. Yes the harmonica of Bob Dylan is well productive in its pieces, except that Bob Dylan never uses the harmonica in a way which allows to discover its truths melodic possibilities which will be able to ruffle to you up the pleasure hair, to touch you indeed...
   2. Yes the harmonica is famous in westerns but such as "Les enfants du Marais" are seldom thought of films, "Jean de Florette" and famous films from your country etc, in incidental musics in many advertising, in success titles however known where it is taken for the accordion to see the violin...
4. 4 transportable everywhere: the very first played in space (voice taken appart) etc etc etc...

However people are very often divested facing the lack of information on this instrument: where to play it, with whom to teach, which family of harmonicas, with which share (alone isolated in a village with no guess that there is somebody in the same situation in the neighborhood).

Finally why not sharing any serious links of my point of view, who could help these people in lack of information, who have either no possibility of travelling as me, of discover this "family" as I could make it until then...

Roughly what I would like, is to :

1. 1 Offer a list of links classified by topic where to go shopping at the market, and I hope for it of unexpected discoveries (so that you still have hair by leaving my blog, or so that you are not found lost died of hunger there and of thirst in the search of an information such sand grain wanted in a desert and however I did not drink!).
2. 2 Favour meetings over the world (And that already works in France !)
3. 3 Make understand any individual passing through what point this small thing deserves well the "Instrument" title: useful in all musical registers including in the symphonic orchestras...

Be please conscious, that I am far from showing all that deserves attention... I hope that my blog gives you desire to search farther !
Of course I do not feel invested with a mission, but I feel great with having a feeling that I can help others !... It is necessary to confess that it is really great to know that it is so possible to please somebody since music is a sharing...
Please also have a look to the left at the list  'Maps of Players by family...' and the one more general of my mate Paul Lassey. In few words, rather than complaining of the miss around the harmonica world  I am just trying do something ...

Patrice Rayon

PS: Excuse my crap english... My mother langage is the french, and I do not have not enough time to manage all that so I must often make very quickly...

PPS: A small lonely initiative seems often miserable, almost useless but if people does want to believe a bit in it, it is not killed and this does possibly lead to nice things, even more !...