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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
 


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