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Written in
fRoots
issue 290/291, 2007
BIELLA NUEI
Sol d’Ibierno
Delicias DCD 67 (2006)
XEREMIERS DE SON ROCA
Trempats
Ona Digital OD CD-200 (2004)
NOU ROMANCER
Llengua d’Espases
Ona Digital OD CD-254 (2006)
AL-MAYURQA
Tradició I Compromís
Ona Digital OD DVD/CD 237 (2005)
If I say that Biella Nuei is a band which has been in existence since 1984,
drawing its material and instrumentation from fieldwork in the rich tradition of
Aragón, and whose members have been involved in the release of a clutch of
valuable field-recording CDs as well as having their own instrument-making
workshop, it’s possible, though sad, that some of you might be getting an
impression of studious worthiness.
But Sol d’Ibierno isn’t at all
worthy-sounding. Full of strong melody, characterful playing and singing
(largely male-led) and infectious energy, well produced with arrangements that
blend in a very natural and cohesive way instruments including the skirt-clad
Aragón bagpipe, dulzaina, bandurria and percussion including the string-drum
salterio, with guitar, accordion, flutes and double bass. It’s a true populist
music, bursting with variety, richness and sheer Aragón identity, and without
overt and soon-to-be-passé modernising tricks they make the folk music of
present-day life, the bustle of the city of Zaragoza. The video on YouTube of
the track Te Kambian Los Tiempos, while not musically one of the most
interesting, shows them doing just that, creating a dancing stir in the
traffic-jammed city.
On this evidence this is an inspired band, full
of experience and confidence, deeply rooted but speaking with a fresh,
contemporarily relevant Aragonese voice, that isn’t as well-known abroad as it
should be. It’s significant that another long-established name now reaching new
audiences, Eliseo Parra, contributes percussion on several tracks.
www.biellanuei.com has information, videos and audio.
The xeremies is the Mallorcan bagpipe,
mouth-blown, a single chanter with double-reed plus a dangling cluster of
drones. Xeremiers de Son Roca comprises the traditional pairing of xeremies with
flabiol (tabor-pipe, played with the left hand, with five or seven fingerholes)
and tamborino (small snare-drum, played with the right hand).
Xeremier Tomeau Camps, the present generation of
a century-long Camps family bagpiping tradition, is a master player with an
extensive repertoire of interesting tunes, some of which – for example the jotas
- wouldn’t sound out of place on the other side of Iberia in Galicia. Indeed,
though different in appearance, the xeremies and Galician gaita have some
similarities in their tone and playing style. The flabiol and tamborino player
is Pere Joan Martorell.
The xeremies and flabiol play largely in unison,
with the tamborino pointing out the dance-rhythm. On some tracks the pair are
joined, to variable effect, by various fretted instruments, hurdy-gurdy, bass,
grunting friction-drum ximbomba and extra percussion, but this album’s main
value is as a collection of distinctive traditional tunes well played in duet by
masters Camps and Martorell, plus four tracks from the 1970s of the playing of
the previous generation, Tomeau’s uncle and father, Mestre Pep Camps and Mestre
Jaume Camps, who were known as Xeremiers de Son Roqueta or de Son Roca. Back
then xeremies was tuned to a much more idiosyncratic scale than it generally is
today. There’s also a recording of Mestre Pep singing, prefaced by the fine
present-day singing of Pep Miquel Camps.
CDs of quality traditional Mallorcan music aren’t
exactly widely distributed, so this is a very welcome release.
Having said that, the website of the Mallorcan
label Ona Digital reflects quite an upsurge of enthusiasm for Mallorcan
traditional music; there are over thirty releases in the folk section of its
catalogue, among them the Xeremiers CD (which is part of the label’s traditional
series Col-lecció Sons d’Una Illa), and the fourth album by Nou Romancer,
a Mallorcan band formed in 1994 that focuses on the Mallorcan romanços, which
are part of the wider Iberian body of traditional ballads.
Llengua d’Espases is a very elegantly
arranged and produced piece of work, featuring the passionate, hard tenor vocals
of the quintet’s accordionist Pere V. Rado. The band’s other instrumentation of
flutes, viola, guitar, bouzouki, hurdy-gurdy and percussion is augmented by
strings and clarinet, and joined by more singers including a mixed choir. The
latter features in the album’s most striking track, La Mort De Na Roseta,
in which an ominous woody scratching and a pulsing drumbeat underpin a complex
superstructure of strings and voices around a powerful, repetitive vocal melody;
it’s a track that, if it were to leak out onto world music radio, might well
draw attention to the music of islands better known for fun in the sun.
A long book-shaped package further down the
review pile turns out to be another Ona release, by the band Al-Mayurqa, which
has released five albums since 1995. Tradició I Compromís (Tradition and
Commitment) is a double CD of tracks from those albums – one CD of dance music,
one of listening music - plus a DVD that gives some background to the group’s
members, instruments and ideology. The band, which features the Xeremiers de Son
Roca’s Pere Joan Martorell on xeremies and flabiol, is clearly well researched,
knowledgeable and indeed committed, but employs the full range of traditional
instruments precisely and steadily rather than excitingly or earthily, and the
male and female vocals likewise don’t take flight in ploddingly careful
arrangements.
Xeremiers de Son Roca are at
www.mallorcaweb.net/xeremiersdesonroca, Nou Romancer
www.nouromancer.com, Al-Mayurqa
www.al-mayurqa.org, and Ona Digital
www.onadigital.com.
© 2007
Andrew Cronshaw
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