 |
| Yannick Martin |
Hundreds of traditional musicians from Brittany's top pipe bands, known as Bagadoù, convened on the town of Brest for the region's most prestigious championships on Sunday.
They were joined by thousands of fans in showing their support for Yannick Martin, a 24-year old virtuoso of the bombard, a double reed instrument from the oboe family, who has twice been crowned Brittany's champion player.
Mr Martin has been the target of a hate campaign by a Houston-based white supremacist website called Breiz Atao (Brittany Forever), the name of a Breton nationalist journal that supported Nazism in the second world war.
In a post called "le biniou et la bombarde" (a play on words for bagpipe and "wog"), commentators claimed that "an extra-European will never be a real Breton. Whether it pleases people or not, we've never seen black Celts." The site also included a provocative video later removed.
Mr Martin, born in Columbia but adopted and raised by a Breton family, has filed for charges of "racial discrimination". His brother, adopted and raised by a different family is also a top pipe player. Both play in one of the region's most acclaimed bands, Kemper, which competed in Brest yesterday.
Read this item in full at Telegraph
