Guieldu at the Roches Celtiques Festival

Saint-Étienne, Loire

Celtic music and mining heritage at Les Roches Celtiques in the Loire

DSince the late 1990s, Les Roches Cel­tiques has been held every sum­mer in Saint-Éti­enne. Over three days, the fes­ti­val brings music to three very dif­fer­ent set­tings: Parc Cou­ri­ot, right in the heart of the city; the château at Saint-Vic­tor-sur-Loire; and the medieval vil­lage of Rochetail­lée, on the banks of the Loire, which hosts the festival’s main day. Organ­ised by the city coun­cil and free to attend, the fes­ti­val brings togeth­er Euro­pean bands play­ing Celtic music, folk and folk rock, along­side Irish, Scot­tish and Bre­ton dance groups.

Beyond the con­certs, the fes­ti­val brings togeth­er music, her­itage and activ­i­ties for all ages, turn­ing these few days into a gen­uine cel­e­bra­tion of Celtic culture.

Sat­ur­day 4 July 2026 was our turn. We took to the main stage in the medieval vil­lage of Rochetail­lée, at the foot of its cas­tle, where the fes­ti­val holds its main day, shar­ing the bill with Austria’s Celti­ca – Pipes Rock! and Italy’s Jim­my & Scots Folk Band.

Rochetail­lée has a pop­u­la­tion of few­er than 800, and on that Sat­ur­day the vil­lage clos­es its streets to traf­fic. The only way in is by free shut­tle bus from Saint-Éti­enne, 5 km away, help­ing to pre­vent the vil­lage from being over­whelmed by the near­ly 4,000 peo­ple who attend each night.

After our expe­ri­ence in Breizh (2025), Guieldu’s music was cross­ing the Pyre­nees once again. This time, our des­ti­na­tion was Saint-Éti­enne, a city with which we share more than a stage: the mem­o­ry of two regions shaped by min­ing, more than a thou­sand kilo­me­tres apart but bound togeth­er by the same his­to­ry of coal.

Héc­tor intro­duced each song in French, draw­ing con­nec­tions between Asturi­an iden­ti­ty — not only its Celtic roots, but also its indus­tri­al and min­ing her­itage — and the indus­tri­al his­to­ry of Saint-Éti­enne. He spoke about the coal that con­nects us and the sol­i­dar­i­ty of min­ers, a shared spir­it that has shaped a par­tic­u­lar way of life. He also dropped in a few local expres­sions, a small touch that was met with smiles from the audi­ence and helped cre­ate a spe­cial con­nec­tion from the very beginning.

The set drew large­ly from Mem­o­ries de Deva and, from the very first bars, we felt that some­thing spe­cial was hap­pen­ing. What began as curios­i­ty about a band from a place many had nev­er heard of, singing in a lan­guage most of the audi­ence was hear­ing for the first time, grad­u­al­ly turned into a real sense of con­nec­tion: peo­ple danc­ing, voic­es join­ing in with the cho­rus­es with­out under­stand­ing a word, and a qui­et atten­tive­ness dur­ing the more inti­mate pas­sages — the kind of response that only comes when music can tran­scend language.

Sev­er­al Asturi­an flags could be seen among the crowd. After the con­cert, a few peo­ple came over to say hel­lo: a Cuban-born man whose grand­par­ents were Asturi­an, a cou­ple from Xixón now liv­ing in Switzer­land who had already seen us in Lori­ent and want­ed to see us again, and a French cou­ple who had fall­en in love with Asturias — a Celtic land they had known lit­tle about until dis­cov­er­ing it through our music.

We returned to Asturias with many miles behind us, but also with some­thing that could nev­er fit in a suit­case: the sto­ries of those who shared that evening with us.

Would you like to see the video?

Video and Photos from the Concert

© Pho­tos: Damien Vasseur