Gilles Servat

Gilles Servat is a French singer, born in Tarbes in southern France in 1945, into a family whose roots lay in the Nantes region of Brittany.

He spent his early childhood and teenage years around Nantes and Cholet, after his father obtains a position of chief of the personnel at the factory Ernault-Batignolles.

[2] After a baccalauréat in literature, he studied sculpture, painting, drawing and engraving at the École régionale des beaux-arts d'Angers, with the goal of becoming a teacher.

In may 1968, he discovered the Breton political problems after meeting Serge Bihan, from Groix, and makes a parallel with the struggles a friend from Occitania told him about.

There, he lived with the working class, reads the book Ar en deulin by Yann-Ber Kalloc'h, understood his roots and decided to sing them.

[5] At the end of summer, he came back to Paris for work, and performed regularly at the café La Ville de Guingamp (in Montparnasse), where he was discovered by the owner of the Ti-Jos who invited him to play there.