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Written in fRoots issue 278/279, 2006


AULAGA FOLK
No Es Mala Leña
Armando ARD 075 (2005)

From the Valle del Ambroz, in Cáceres and Badajoz region of Estremadura, west central Spain, this band doesn’t have the most promising of names, but the opening full-blooded massed traditional female vocals over rattling tambourines, gutty drums and insistently bleeping old-fashioned arpeggiator commands instant interest.
      That track suggests that perhaps there’ll be subsequent further upfront use of synths, but no, they simply have their place in today’s tradition. The next track is very different – a strong male solo traditional voice over Spanish guitars and percussion - but all the tracks here are different. They draw on the variety of musical influences and experience of the band members, including jazz, salsa and tango, to project traditional songs in such a way that they, with their shapely tunes and compelling rhythms, are always complete and paramount, not drowned.
      While the traditional music of some parts of Iberia is pretty well represented on CD these days, Estremadura’s has been less covered. It’s not only very ‘Spanish-sounding’ melodically and rhythmically, it makes natural reconnections with the Latin music that sprang from Iberian roots.
      What emerges in No Es Mala Leña (which translates as the self-deprecating “It’s not bad firewood”, from the song-line “It’s said that the little olive tree is bad firewood”) is a celebration of the delights of the tradition, genuinely living traditional music that pulls in and is fortified by whatever comes near it. Cathartically liberated from the studio-sapped pedestrian plod that has sometimes afflicted Spanish folk bands trying to do something contemporary with their tradition, the fine and exuberant singing, both male and female, with plenty of character and grain and very much in the spirit of the tradition, the strength of the material and the playfulness of the arrangements make an invigorating listen.
      The instrumentation includes the ‘traditional’ - guitar, flutes and whistles, gaita and tamboril, laúd – but isn’t bound to them, adding fluidly swinging clarinet, accordion, piano, saz, bass and occasional programmed sounds. It’s not impeccable or high-powered, nor a self-conscious attempt at being slick, fusionist or modernising, and I’ve no idea whether they’re any good live, but as an album it’s considerably pleasing. A note in the booklet indicates these people’s attitude. To freely translate: “Here’s our second album. We hope you like it; if not, well, there you go (we’re not refunding your money). We’ll carry on working, we hope for many years, because the truth is we enjoy doing it”.
      The press release that came with the review copy of the album, by the way, is a prime example of the vagaries of computerised translation. Here’s a chunk:
      “This way, so much the popular topics for his(her,your) own(proper) condition, with the arrangements of same own(proper) of Aulaga Folk, as the original ones for express permission that here we realize, can be reproduced in its entirety or partiality, since it looks like to them an occupation. (Broadcasting, head-boards, advertising wedges, interviewed(guessed)...)”
     That computer should become a lawyer.
     Get to know them at www.aulagafolk.com; the CD’s available online from www.tecnosaga.com.


© 2006 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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