02/10/2026
It was with a slight sense of panic that a few months ago I noticed that vocalist Korentin Le Davay, best known for his work as frontman for the best Fest Noz band going today, War Sav, was releasing an album with another band. Had he grown tired of War Sav and moved on? Noooo! My fears were unfounded, however. Egin, Davay’s duo with Maël Guego, was actually the older of the two bands, and were finally releasing their first recording.
Egin describe themselves: Egin is unlike any other act in the world of Breton music. The duo composes folk pieces in Breton tinged with blues and jazz harmonies. Accomplices with a long friendship, Korentin Le Davay and Maël Guego dialogue with well-embodied popular Breton texts and a very colorful acoustic guitar.
Egin is a duo who observes the world, a duo listening to the way the world echoes in them. Egin talks about the world through the events and feelings that go through their lives and those of the people around them. In this eponymous record Egin, Korentin and Maël express the need to experiment with new musical styles in Breton and hope to participate in nourishing the imagination of the Breton community.
Egin has been around for years, having started playing together in high school. They are not a Fest Noz act - their repertoire consists of original songs inspired by American folk and blues acts as diverse as Bob Dylan and Robert Johnson, as well as early Breton bands from the 1970s such as Storlok. Their lyrics, always in Breton, tend towards two broad themes: nature, particularly the environment and ecology, and then social/political aspects of everyday life, such as immigration and homelessness.
Egin funded this recording through crowdfunding. On their crowdfunding page they wrote:
At the dawn of the celebration of the 10 years of Egin, we wanted to work on an album whose release is planned for the winter of 2024. Through the various tracks of this record, recorded at the Logelloù (Penvénan) during the summer of 2024, we invite you to a musical and poetic walk on the paths of our lives and our emotions.
Our history is a long friendship. We grew up together, young Bretons in a world that leads us to find our place and trace our own furrows. Each song of the recording makes you enter our intimacy, in an acoustic sound where the voice is clear and the guitar is bright. A beautiful universe from which emerges a freshness and a simplicity that recalls that of the American song writers, with lyrics grounded in a popular language.
Beyond the musical creation, we wanted to conduct a reflection on the physical object that this work will be. The choice turned to silkscreen printing, a work for which we wanted to be accompanied by our longtime ally Berc'hed Kallag. Each album will be screen-printed by us from a visual produced by Berc'hed. True to our values, we have aspired to make Egin and its production also a work of craftsmanship. We wanted to devote time to the object, beyond just the music and its interpretation.
You may have noticed the interview article by Morvan Léon on the front of the gallery above, which Egin posted on their Facebook page. We’ve translated the more interesting parts:
Q: Your duo is called Egin (sprout or bud in French). What is its story?
Maël Guego: Egin is a folk duo in Breton that has existed for ten years. We started playing music at the Diwan high school in Carhaix. Initially, there were four of us, with a percussionist and a harmonica player, for a sound close to Bob Dylan. We wrote songs at the boarding school and participated in Taol-Lañs, a competition organized every two years during the Breton national festival. We won it in 2009 and expanded to six members with a backing vocalist and a beatboxer (a type of vocal percussion). We became a duo with just Korentin and I when we turned professional.
Q: You draw inspiration from American folk music. Does that change anything about your songwriting in Breton?
Maël Guego: I often write lyrics after reading a book or going through a difficult stage in my life. I only write songs for Egin. I'm reserved, and Breton protects me. In French, it would be more complicated to talk about certain subjects.
Korentin Le Davay: Our songs are spoken in a straightforward voice, with everyday words. We talk about feelings, about all sorts of things, in a direct way; it's written like prose poetry, even if it's sometimes rhymed.
Q: You're using crowdfunding; is it the best current model?
Korentin Le Davay: It allows us to communicate, to make the public feel involved. We're working with the Beliza company, which handles the administrative procedures and with finding dates. This year, they launched into producing records for Breton artists. They produce War Sav, the band I sing in, and they're experienced with crowdfunding.
Q: Your CD will be accompanied by a screen print, why and how?
Maël Guego: We contacted an artist from Buhulien, Berc'hed Kallag, whom we went to high school with. We asked her to do the graphic design and she suggested we do everything ourselves using screen printing. We have a stencil board, we ink the stencil and then we run the screen print through all the holes of the stencil. Each copy is unique. We create gradients of color, and the ink blends little by little.
Korentin Le Davay: Being a musician is also a way of life. We try to do things ourselves, to keep a handcrafted touch. We're not just about artistic performance, we're creating an ecosystem. Berc'hed enjoys doing screen printing with others, whether it's something that people invest in or not.
~ Fañch
