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Written in fRoots issue 287, 2007


VARIOUS ARTISTS
France – Basque Country - Kantuketan
Ocora C 560202/03 (2006)

In fRoots 277 I recommended, as a very fine display of Basque traditional unaccompanied singing, the album Eperra by Dominika and Niko Etxart and Robert Larrandaburu. They’re on this Ocora double album, too, together with other major traditional singers, mainly from the province of Soule in the north-eastern portion of Euskal Herria that’s on the French side of the France-Spain border.
      Song has been and remains a strong identifier of Euskal culture; the lyrics aren’t a blatant, blunt political weapon, they’re the substance of that culture, the poetry of observation, history, love and life.
      A few tracks here are from the Radio France archive, such as recordings from the 1970s of historic performances in the (still very much alive) competitions for bertsolaria, the impressively agile-minded improvising of witty and poetic rhyming lyrics, on a given theme, to traditional tune forms. One of the greats of bertsolaria was shepherd Fernando Aire ‘Xalbador’; there’s a recording of him here that was made at the tribute concert in 1976 to celebrate the publication of his book; later that day, as the assembled company began to sing the Euskal patriotic hymn Gernikako Arbola, he suffered a heart attack and died, aged 56.
      Many of the tracks, though, were recorded in the natural situation of a meal, in June 2005 in a tavern in the Soule village of Aussurucq, at which were gathered leading Souletin singers of three generations.
      The prevailing male vocal style is a soaring, finely-controlled tenor, typified by the fine and well-known singers Beñat Achiary, Erramun Martikorena and Mixel Arotse, or by Mixel Etxekopar, who accompanies himself on the small three-holed one-handed whistle xirula and the ttun-ttun, the long-boxed Euskal ‘string drum’, whose six strings are struck together with a stick held in the other hand. Also playing these characteristic Soule instruments is another of the 20th century’s best-known Euskal traditional singers, Jean Mixel Bedaxagar, recorded in the 1980s.
      The women singers here are fewer, but Maddi Oihenart’s contributions are striking, including beautiful harmonising with Arotze and Etxekopar in the contemporary lullaby Gaü Beilako Eleak. There’s more fine harmony singing from others, too, particularly the aforementioned Etxarts, father Dominika and son Niko (the latter also well-known as a Euskara-language blues singer) with Robert Larrandaburu.


© 2007 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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