Katell Keineg

Katell Keineg (born February 1965), is a Breton-Welsh singer-songwriter, based in Wales.

Born in Brittany and raised first there and later in the Rhymney Valley, Katell Keineg is the second child and only daughter of Breton poet and playwright Paol Keineg and his then wife, Judith Pritchard (née Gurney), a Welsh political activist.

Both parents were active in their nations' respective autonomy movements, Judith with Plaid Cymru, Paol with the UDB. The family moved to Wales where, exposed to Breton and Welsh folk music, Katell began singing, mainly in choirs and eisteddfodau. Early influences included The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.

She has cited The Song Remains the Same as influential; she watched it in the same year she began busking in Cardiff, which led to travels around the United Kingdom and Ireland playing at ad hoc gigs and festivals.

After taking a law degree at the London School of Economics, she lived briefly in Cardiff and, at age 24, moved to Dublin, having particularly come to enjoy the city and its ambiences. From the early 90s onwards, Katell travelled back and forth between Dublin and New York, where she made her first two albums for Elektra Records. She is now based in Wales.

In the early 1990s she began living in New York for a time. A live appearance in Times Square was captured for posterity by Irish TV in the summer of 1992, by which time she had become one of a number of regular performers at the famed, now defunct, Sin-é in lower Manhattan.

Her first release was a seven-inch single called "Hestia" on SOL, an independent label co-owned by musicians Bob Mould and Nicholas Hill. She was signed by Elektra in 1993 and in 1994 her debut album, Ô Seasons Ô Castles was released. It garnered much acclaim, most especially from fellow musicians, the album's compositions demonstrating her keen, moving voice in a subtle range of styles. One of the songs, The Gulf of Araby, was played regularly by Natalie Merchant at concerts for several years and is featured on her live album "Live in Concert, New York City – June 13th 1999". Merchant also invited Keineg to sing on her debut album, Tigerlily, on the song Carnival.

...
Wikipedia