The towering figure in French folk music, who revived the Celtic harp, is touring Ireland this week Alan Stivell at this studio in Brittany. Photograph: Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Mon May 25 2026 - 09:19 • 4 MIN READAlan Stivell is thinking back to the time he taught Shane MacGowan to sing in Breton, the Celtic language of France’s northwest Atlantic corner, which is at the heart of the harpist’s lifework reviving the traditional culture and music of Brittany.“He was a like a quiet pupil at school. He was asking: is it okay? Is it okay? Repeating and repeating the same phrase until I said it’s good,” Stivell recalls of that recording session at a studio in Nantes.“He could spend an hour or two hours on a single phrase for a song.
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