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Written in fRoots issue 247/248, 2004


LEILÍA
Madama
Discmedi Blau DM 796 02 (2003)

IALMA
Marmuladas
ZOKU-EMI Belgium 07243 5394332 5 (2002)

As Faltriqueira made clear in their cover feature in fR 242/243, the pandeiretera revival isn’t restricted to them, and in fact they’re one of the newest in what’s showing signs of becoming a boom in Galician female singing groups arising from the singer-tambourinist tradition. One of the first-established and best-known of this new generation is Leilía, who are now on their third album and have a considerable profile, including substantial touring in Spain and abroad and singing on the dizzying heights of the roof of Santiago cathedral with gaiteiro Xosé Manuel Budiño during the millennium TV globalcast.
      The sound of the five singers – Montse Rivera, Felisa and Patricia Segade and Ana and Mercedes Rodríguez - is principally the characteristic gutsy unison over their skittering pandeiretas, with occasional solo lines. In their live shows, before bringing on the backing band, the first set is usually just the five of them, clearly stating the tradition, and that’s what we get on four of the thirteen tracks of Madama, while the rest involve the band or guest musicians. Recently, as on the track Olvídame, the voices have begun to occasionally spread into harmony, and sometimes a single voice features, as on the slow, lyrical Hei De Estar Alí, which has the appealingly deep voice of Mercedes Rodríguez in a lead solo role.
      When fourteen years ago they began to be a group rather than an informal gathering, Leilía’s sound was augmented just by a single gaiteiro. Then for the second album on Virgin Spain in 1998 there were accompaniments by Milladoiro’s Antón Seoane and Nando Casal. Now the live setup has a five-piece band including gaita, guitar, clarinet, accordion, bass and drums. For Madama it’s supplemented on by guests such as Euskadi’s ubiquitous trikitilari Kepa Junkera, the violin of Berrogüetto’s Quim Farinha and, on E Ti Que Tanto Tes, the vocals and percussion of Portugal’s Gaiteiros de Lisboa. The arrangements are excellent, robust and upfront, enriching the colours and emphasising the melodies and texture of the vocals and pandeiretas.
While the melodic material is virtually all traditional, collected by the members of the group from singers in villages around Galicia (each named and map-marked in the booklet), in a natural continuation of the normal folk-process they’ve generally either modified or new-made the lyrics to express what’s relevant to them.
      Leilía’s beginnings, like those of Faltriqueira and most pandeireteras past and present, were simply in playing and singing for amusement and because they wanted something to dance to. So in their music there’s much of the feel of dance, but it’s a well-varied set with a balance of up-tempo and slower-paced, the latter including the Azorean O Meu Amour, which is sung almost ecclesiastically over slow organish chords and piano from Fía Na Roca’s Xosé Ramón Vásquez.

      The group Ialma comprises five pandeireteras, with a studio team of ten for their second CD Marmuladas, reduced to a five-piece band for their 2003 live shows. On the album the pandeiretas don’t make an appearance until the fourth, title, track, the slow first part of which is accompanied by guitarist Pascal Chardome on limpid piano before skipping into a pandeireta-brisk rhythm. It’s preceded by the samba-ish Cubanita – “come my Cuban sweetheart, you have stolen my heart” - a pasodoble with flamenco-style palmas, and a waltz lamenting the death of a donkey.
      Instrumentation includes bugle, flutes and gaitas from Jowan Merckx, violin and French bagpipes from Luc Pilartz, accordion from Didier Laloy… Not very Galician names, those. That’s because these pandeireteras - Magali Menéndez, Verónica and Natalia Codesal and Noemi and Marisol Palomo – live in Belgium. Some born in Galicia, some daughters of Galician and Asturian emigrants to Belgium, they were brought up with the music and dance. Beginning five years ago as a traditional costumed pandeiretera and dancing group, in due course they concentrated on the music and after the first album moved on from the costumes. All their lyrics and tunes, apart from some arrangement expansions, are material collected in Galicia by a number of people including Leilía’s Montse Rivera and Felisa Segade. They sing them like they were never away, while their Belgian musicians, with the outsiders’ view that can bring useful perspectives (or sometimes, but not here, obsessive purism) deliver spirited and creative accompaniments – there are, after all, no conventions for accompanying the previously unaccompanied pandeiretera canon.
      According to the press release, having charmed Belgian audiences, the first time Ialma performed in Galicia, as a straight pandeiretera group without the band, they were seen as selling ice to the Inuit. But their 2003 Galician shows, with the band’s approach marking them out as different, were apparently well received, and on this CD showing deservedly so.


© 2003 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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