Area musician looks forward to bridging genres, cultures at Arts Center show

Musician Cedric Briand has three shows lined up this weekend, and no two of them are the same.

After playing at his single release party in Northfield and joining the lineup of Orchard Bash at Minneapolis Cider Company, Briand is headed to the Owatonna Arts Center on Sunday, where he’ll bring modern technology and ancient musical traditions together for a genre-defying concert.

Briand is the multi-instrumentalist behind Greenvale Manitou, a “solo project with occasional guests and friends.” In studio, he often performs multiple parts himself, from vocals to percussion. With the assistance of a loop pedal, which allows him to record and loop up to six instruments at once, he’ll do the same live.

“On stage, you will see me move from one instrument to another seamlessly,” said Briand, noting that a technology produces a “trance-like rhythm” he appreciates.

His repertoire for the show ranges from acoustic guitar to handmade African drums. Briand draws upon a wide array of genres and traditions from around the world, including African, Celtic, Nordic and Native American.

He previously presented an artist development workshop at the arts center, exploring how artists can use technology to their advantage. After meeting Briand, OAC Artistic Director Silvan Durben was intrigued by the diversity of his musical influences and variety of instruments he uses.

Durben said the Sunday concert promises to be a “fascinating musical experience,” and he hopes attendees walk away inspired by new thoughts and ideas.

For Briand, variety is exciting, and homogeneity is boring. One song may sound utterly different from the next, and that’s entirely by design. The only thing tying them together is his sense of rhythm and groove.

“If you can come to my shows, I’m sure you will like at least one song. Maybe you will not like all the songs, but also maybe this is why I’m doing what I’m doing. Maybe I’m not here to be liked,” he laughed.

Briand originally hails from Brittany, a region of France heavily shaped by Celtic immigrants who settled there in the late Roman era and middle ages. He grew up listening to the music of French singer-songwriters, noting an appreciation for Édith Piaf. As a teenager, he learned percussion from North African immigrants in France. He’s woven all of these influences and more into the music he plays today.

Throughout his musical career, he’s jumped from one genre to the next, experimenting with electronic music, metal, funk and more. He has a fraught relationship with the concept of genre, likening it to a prison while acknowledging its utility and inevitability.

“I think humans have always liked the idea of classifications and putting things in little drawers because it makes them feel comfortable, it makes them feel safe. It helps sorting things out and it helps looking at things in contrast,” said Briand.

He noted that genre labels rarely come from musicians themselves, and are often devised by critics and the press. While embracing a genre can help musicians find an audience and market their music, he said it can also be constraining. Of all the genres phases he’s gone through, Briand said the longest was metal. He still loves metal, and even joined metal band The Broken Rule recently, but he feels some of the genre’s diehard fans display a restrictive kind of tribalism.

“I like the genre because it’s very tight, it’s very rhythmic and it’s also very demanding, vocally especially. Something I always disliked about the metal scene is, you have to be faithful. If you’re a metalhead, you have to stay a metalhead. You’re kind of forbidden to wander off the metal zone,” said Briand. “It felt very much like you’re part of that group or you’re not.”

The name Greenvale Manitou speaks to his interest in melding diverse influences. It references the intersection of Greenvale Avenue and Manitou Street in Northfield, the location of his studio. For Briand, the literal crossroads signifies exchanges and meetings between disparate cultures. Manitou is an Algonquian word for a spirit or supernatural force, giving the name an approximate meaning of “spirit of the green valley.”

Briand moved to the United States in 2005, studying at institutions including Pennsylvania State University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He’s taught at a number of liberal arts schools in Minnesota, including Carleton, St. Olaf, Macalester College and Augsburg University.

Since moving to Minnesota, he’s taken an interest in the state’s French history, particularly the interactions between French fur trappers and Native Americans. While acknowledging these interactions were not always positive, he noted French voyageurs generally coexisted with indigenous people better than other Europeans, often joining their communities and intermarrying with them.

Whether he’s talking about culture or music, he expresses a desire to see a relaxing of the categories that divide people.

“I’m still appalled that to this day I’m still asked if I’d rather listen to The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. I listen to both. Why did someone decide that those two bands need to become a binary of some sorts?” said Briand.

Briand has been playing around Northfield and the south metro area, and aims to increase his reach around the midwest in venues from Rochester to Chicago.