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Written in fRoots issue 345, 2012


LEILÍA
Consentimento
Fol Música 100FOL1056 (2011)

There was a time when it seemed that in ‘el boom’, the folk music resurgence in the various parts of northern Spain, the wonderful, exuberant group singing so characteristic in Iberia’s living traditional musics was being neglected in favour of instrumental ingenuity. But in Galicia a corner has been turned with the rise of new pandeiretera groups; women singing full-bloodedly to their self-accompaniment on skittering pandeiretas (tambourines)
     Leilía has been one of the leaders and role-models in this since its formation in 1989, both for its own performances and recordings and those with others such as Xosé Manuel Budiño, Milladoiro and Kepa Junkera. The line-up, which has been largely stable over the years, now consists of Montse Rivera, Felisa and Patricia Segade, Ana, Mercedes and Rosario Rodríguez.
     This, their fifth album, is magnificent, gutsy, full of irresistible strong full-throated pandeiretera singing and energy.
     Just three instrumentalists join them - arranger Xoán Porto, Vadim Yukhnevich and Xacobe Martínez - using predominantly guitar, accordion and double bass with occasional gaita. Their instrumental accompaniments are creative and robust but in no way swamp the singing; they fully support and integrate with the voices, pandeiretas and square double-headed jingle-less pandeiros, shaping a distinctiveness for each song.
     Most of the singing is in unison, without overt vocal or choral arrangement, just sometimes splitting naturally into octaves or fifths in the way that people often do when singing together. One track, Corazón De Sal, is a very strikingly sung by a solo voice; it’s not made clear in either of the pack’s two booklets which of the group sings it.
     There is a theme to the album. It celebrates the women who have created, preserved and transmitted Galicia’s oral tradition, and uses as their figurehead singer and pandeiretera Eva Castiñeira, whose singing on an old Clave release is heard at the opening of the final track, Jota De Eva. The melodies of all the tracks are traditional, collected in the counties of Coruña and Pontevedra; their lyrics, though, are by seven present-day Galician women poets.
     Despite the modern media’s consumer culture, in Spain people still like to sing when they’re together, and their songs continue to evolve; this isn’t just music for stages and albums, it gathers in the present day as it rolls from past to future.
     www.folmusica.com


© 2011 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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