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Written in fRoots issue 326/327, 2010
 

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Cantigas Do Camiño
Do Fol 10002042 (2010)

The famous pilgrims’ route through northern Spain to Galicia’s Santiago de Compostela, the Camino (in Galego, Camiño) de Santiago, has been the peg on which many albums have been hung. Here’s one more: a compilation of Camiño-related tracks from a spread of artists in today’s Galician roots music scene, in an up-market book-style package funded, together with a series of shows by some of the artists, by the Xacobeo 2010 Camiño celebrations and Galician government.
      Though the executive producer writes that the artists have “created, composed and recorded each song specially for this album”, actually several of the thirteen tracks come from existing albums: Milladoiro’s O Camiño, medieval sounding with a monasterial choral opening, comes from their 1991 Galicia No Tempo, Leilía’s full-blooded pandeireteira-vocal 1000 Camiños was on 2005’s Son de Leilía, and the slow-building closer Indosesta is from Berrogüetto’s 1999 Viaxe por Urticaria.
      The rest do seem to be genuinely new-made. The opener, Camiño Longo by Susana Seivane, features her not as bagpiper but as rather fine singer, accompanied by guitar and programming. In their song Ultreia the cheeky young pandeireteira vocal charm of Faltriqueira, recording this time not in Euskadi but back home in Galicia with Galician musicians, is clearly undiminished.
Uxía duets with Brazilian singer-guitarist Fred Martins in their samba of the road to Compostela A Casa Da Xente. Sara Vidal sings the Santiago traditional romance-ballad of Don Gaiferos De Mormaltán in Luar na Lubre’s track, a preview from their forthcoming album. The 40-member Galician folk orchestra Sondeseu, led by ex-Milladoiro Rodrigo Romaní and Berrogüetto’s Anxo Pintos, delivers a big swirling gaitas, hurdy-gurdies, fiddles, female group vocals and percussion rendition of one of Galicia’s most memorable traditional tunes, Alborada De Pontecaldas.
      The booklet’s clunkily incompetent English translation, by someone with an English name who misunderstands much of the Castellano and Galego texts and writes like Babelfish, repeatedly calls ex-Berrogüetto singer Guadi Galego “he”; she delivers a perky, skipping version of the Latin Camiño song Dum Paterfamilias with gaita, requinta, soprano sax and accordion.
Fuxan Os Ventos, reborn after a twenty-year break, bring massed male and female vocals, gaitas and more to a setting of the romance Camiño De Romaría. There’s another great, joyous traditional song tune, Foliada De Santiago, from Treixadura in an augmented version of the sound of the old corales, full-male-voiced and joined by gaitas, accordion, bombo and pandeireta. The hurdy-gurdy, accordion and percussion trio Bonovo collaborate with Jaime Muñoz and Carlos Beceiro of Madrid’s La Musgaña in a pair of instrumental jotas from Galicia and Zamora.
      The album’s only sore-thumb track is singer-songwriter Emilio Rúa’s toe-curlingly syrupy pop-aspirational crooning of his own song over brutal identi-backing.
      Despite that one skip-button track near the end, the blurb’s false claim, and being restricted to tracks reflecting the Camiño theme and inevitably having many omissions in terms of significant potential contributors, the album is a tasty slice of the Galician music now emerged from the 1990s period of over-identification with Scottish/Irish celticness, and it makes a well-flowing, varied listen.
      www.dofolmusica.com


© 2010 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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