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Written in fRoots issue 297, 2008


AIRES D’A TERRA
1904
Ouvirmos VR 0101 (2003)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Galician Folklore – Historical Recordings
Ouvirmos VR 0304 (2007)

As I’ve probably mentioned in the past, the first living traditional music I ran into was as a teenager back in the late 1960s, seeing singers, gaita players and drummers during a fiesta in Galicia. From a stall in the village I bought an EP of music like what I was hearing; it was by a corale called ‘De Ruada’ from Orense, and I’m pretty sure that the members of that were among those I was hearing in the streets and bars. That music, its strength, exuberance, texture and melodies, had a big effect on me, and the EP is one of my most treasured records.
      Corales were organised, traditional-dressed folklore groups, groups of singers usually with gaitas and drums, formed in various towns and villages early in the 20th century to perpetuate Galicia’s rural music. They were tolerated by Franco’s government but - rather as with flamenco in southern Spain and fado in Portugal - after the demise of Iberia’s right-wing dictators they were regarded to some extent as a part of the old regime; and anyway in post-Franco Galicia there was the rise of new approaches to its folk music which burgeoned into “el boom”, with bonds of celticism being formed with Irish and Scottish music.
      But unlike many costumed folk ensembles across Europe, the best of the corales (and De Ruada was one of the best) were no stiff formalisation of the tradition; leading gaiteiros often played with them, the singing, in parallel thirds and fifths, was wonderfully rough-edged and real, and the melodies were distinctive and memorable and became the classics of the Galician repertoire.
      De Ruada was formed in the 1920s, and still exists, but the very first ensemble that - as its leader gaita and sanfona (hurdy-gurdy) player Perfecto Feijóo described it - “took the fields to the stage”, was the Pontevedra group Aires da Terra. Feijóo formed it in 1900 and disbanded it in 1914 when, while performing in Argentina, they finally realised that it wasn’t viable to keep playing and travelling for free. In 1904 the group was recorded (also for no fee) by a “travelling laboratory”, belonging to the Compagnie Française du Gramophone, which was going round Europe recording local music to popularise the new flat disc designed by Emil Berliner.
      There has long been talk of CD re-release of the substantial number of commercial recordings that the corales made, and at last it seems to be happening.
      The Aires da Terra CD is a revelation and a delight, a well-packaged selection of eighteen of those 1904 Aires da Terra recordings, including alalás (popular songs), foliadas (social gathering songs), muiñeiras (usually in 6/8 rhythm) and an alborada (dawn song). The sound quality, while of course showing its age, is considerably better than on the cylinder-recorders of the time, and captures the difficult-to-record and dynamically extreme sounds of strong group singing with gaitas and drums, loud whoops, solo voices and Feijóo’s hurdy-gurdy (which in one unusual track accompanies a male-female alternating duet). The notes, in Galego, Castellano, French and English, are informative; transcriptions of the lyrics would have been a useful addition.
      The Galician Folklore CD, which sadly has virtually no notes, is a sampler of twelve tracks from some of the ten CDs that comprise A Tiracolo, a boxed set of the Ouvirmos label’s first ten releases of vintage commercial recordings of traditional music. Oddly lacking anything from Aires da Terra, the sampler features tracks by De Ruada from 1929, Cantigas e Agarimos from 1952, Os Gaiteiros de Soutelo recorded in 1928, Os Montes de Lugo in 1973, Coro Toxos e Froles in 1922, Os Dezas de Moneixas in 1960, a rather messy pasodoble by Los Monfortinos in 1958, and the US-resident gaiteiro Manuel Dopazo in 1940. All interesting, some splendid, but I’m not sure they’ve picked the best tracks. Of course, to check that, I’d have to be sent the other nine CDs from the boxed set for review…
      Both of these, and the other nine, can be bought online from www.ouvirmos.com


© 2008 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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