- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -
- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -
- Back to Reviews Introduction page -
Written in Folk Roots issue 184, 1998
KEPA JUNKERA
Bilbao 00:00h
Resistencia RESCD 065 (1998)
TAPIA ETA LETURIA
1998
Triki Elkarlanean KD-498/499 (1998)
That today’s booming Spanish celtic-related music industry - over 150,000
Spanish sales for Galician piper Carlos Nuñez’s Brotherhood of Stars CD,
for example - has spilled over into non-celtic Iberian roots music is
illustrated by the appearance of double CDs by each of Euskadi’s (the Basque
country’s) top trikitixa (melodeon) players and innovators, Kepa Junkera and
Joseba Tapia.
Already making critical waves and selling fast is
Kepa’s Bilbao 00:00h, which comes in the form of a hardback, CD-sized
book full of lyrics, notes and photo-artwork, and features a dazzling array of
52 leading roots musicians from across Europe and north America - just about
everyone except Ry Cooder, in fact. Its great success is in its freshness and
directness - no flabby overblown thrash nor sterile studio confection this - and
the pieces, largely instrumentals with a few vocal items, most to Kepa’s own
melodies, aren’t cluttered to blandness with a patchwork of cultural snatches.
Each guest makes a distinctive and audible contribution, all the playing is
tight and focussed, and through all the culture-crossing, Kepa’s playing and
writing maintains a strongly Euskal flavour.
CD 1 steams in with a very natural meeting
between Euskal and Quebecois music, Arin Quebec, featuring the huge
swingy brass and foot power of La Bottine Souriante coupled with Kepa’s nimble
button-scampering staccato, the characteristic trikitixa style. Onward with
Pedro Guerra singing his own lyrics with backing vocals from triki-pop duo
Alaitz eta Maider in Del Hierro a Madagascar, a natural entry for
Madagascan Justin Vali, who contributes valiha or marovany on many tracks and in
a continent-hopping, massed-resources opening to CD 2 sings his own song
Fali-Faly. Other lead vocal contributions are made by the warm-voiced Benito
Lertxundi in a simple duet with triki and his guitar, and the soaring voice of
Portuguese singer Dulce Pontes. In the blowing department are two top young
Galician pipers and wind players, Carlos Nuñez and Xosé Manuel Budiño, plus Liam
O’Flynn, Paddy Moloney and reeds player Javier Paxariño. Fellow-squeezers are
Phil Cunningham and Máirtín O’Connor, combining with Alasdair Fraser’s fiddle.
In Bok-Espok Kepa and alboka-player Ibon Koteron join the driving Swedish
bagpipe, hurdy-gurdy and percussion trio core of Hedningarna. The members of
major Euskal band Oskorri, with which Kepa has regularly guested, appear, as do
several members of La Musgaña and Radio Tarifa. There’s keyboardist Tomás San
Miguel, percussionists including Luis Delgado and Pedro Estevan, and Julio
Andrade is the resident bassist. The planks and sticks of txalaparta, as much an
item of poetry and philosophy as an instrument, are widely used, played by
Harkaitz Martinez and Igor Otxoa, and they perform a splendid duet break in the
last track of CD 1.
For a closer look at the roots of trikitixa we
can turn to the latest project from trikitilaria Joseba Tapia and ace panderoa
(tambourine) player Xabier Berasaluze “Leturia”. Kepa and Tapia are both players
of dazzling skill, who have vied with one another in the writing of tunes and
the winning of competitions. Tapia and Leturia’s path to creating a wider
audience for trikitixa has led them into the creation of rough, wild, street-cred
rock music, reaching through to a younger generation and making a climate for
the advent of such pop-triki developments as Maixa ta Ixiar and Alaitz eta
Maider. Now they have returned to the heartland of trikitixa - they never really
left it - the exciting sound of triki and skittering panderoa, playing for
dancing and spurred on by irrintzi ululation. 1998 comprises 51 dance tunes,
mostly fandangos and arin-arins, some with vocals, recorded by just the two of
them with joyful audio participation from a live dancing audience.
© 1998
Andrew Cronshaw
You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer
and fRoots.
Links:
fRoots - The feature and
review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews
were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.
It's not practical to give, and keep up to date,
current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in
these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the
artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by
Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews,
of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine
Rootsworld.com
For more reviews click on the regions below
NORDIC
BALTIC
IBERIA (& islands)
CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS
OTHER EUROPEAN AMERICAS OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL
- Back to Reviews Introduction page -