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Written in fRoots issue 238, 2003


MILLADOIRO
O Niño Do Sol
Discmedi Blau DM 679-02 (2002)

BERROGÜETTO
Hepta
Boa Do Fol 29 (2001)

FÍA NA ROCA
Contravento
Ventura VE-C-0159-2 (2001)

LAIO
Luneda
World Muxxic 8431588025024 (2002)

By my count, O Niño Do Sol is Milladoiro’s seventeenth album since the band’s debut release in 1980, though Rodrigo Romaní and Anton Seoane’s 1977 album Milladoiro and 1979’s In Memoriam by Xosé V. Ferreiros, Nando Casal and Moncho García Rei, with Romaní and Seoane guesting, show earlier manifestations of the Milladoiro approach. They used traditional gaitas, flutes and percussion, as did the groups of gaiteiros and drummers who were still to be found, though to a diminishing extent, in Galicia’s fiestas and romerias. But Milladoiro added other instrumentation including some from earlier in Galicia’s history such as Romaní’s harp and Seoane’s hurdy-gurdy, and they made arrangements of the traditional material, taking it to the concert stage. As time went on they made connections with Irish music, specifically that of the Chieftains with whom they collaborated, but they’ve never played much actual Irish music and theirs remained distinctively Galician in form.
      Some of the mid-period albums, while always listenable, were less than crucial, including number seven, the one that seems to have got the most attention in North America, Castellum Honesti, and there have been albums made for particular events, and orchestral album and guest-loaded projects, but on O Niño Do Sol there’s a refreshing return to basics of memorable largely traditional tunes and uncluttered playing. Two new young members have joined – guitar, bouzouki and slide guitar player Manú Conde and harp, ocarina and bouzouki player Roi Casal, and there’s a guest vocal from Laura Amado and a 1949 recorded insert of the voice and hurdy-gurdy of that instrument’s main reviver, Faustino Santalices.
      There’s a bonus track, of Kathy Mattea singing James Taylor’s Millworker. It’s a fine song, but there’s no real reason to include it, other than that Milladoiro guested on it on Mattea’s album and they’ve borrowed the same track for theirs. Such a completely different, non Galician sounding item coming immediately after the last track derails the overall feel and the listener’s memory of what went before.

      As the eighties and nineties progressed, more and more Galician bands arose, most of them basing their material on the forms of gaita music though not necessarily using gaitas prominently, and many drawing strength from and making connections with Irish and to some extent Scottish music. Nowadays, though, the Galician musical resurgence is on a roll, and it’s the differences rather than the similarities that are re-asserting. And now, after a largely instrumental period, the vocal tradition is re-emerging, with most bands having a singer, usually female, as a member or guest.
     Formed in 1995 by musicians from several of those bands was Berrogüetto, which has become one of the most powerful and artistically wide-looking of today’s bands, a seven-piece with a dense, rocky sound of hurdy-gurdy, gaitas, fiddle, accordion, soprano sax, harp, fretted instruments, bass and drums, and material largely self-composed on traditional matrices. The prevailing feel is instrumental; fine singer Guadi Galego is a member of the band, but appears on less than half the tracks on Hepta. Her Baixando De Ti is one of the standouts. The album is built around the magical associations in various cultures of the number seven, and the packaging features a collaboration with French visual artist Georges Rousse. Guests include nyckelharpa player Markus Svensson, cimbalomist Kálmán Balogh and Djivan Gasparyan, whose reflective duduk improvisation provides the basis for the short track Armenia.
      Like Milladoiro’s, the album includes a bonus track, an attractive piece featuring Galego’s voice with techno backing. But this one is more sensibly located a long pause after the final track.

      Fía Na Roca began in 1990; Berrogüetto’s frets and harp player Quico Comesaña and violinist Quim Farinha were members in its early days. Today it’s a six-piece comprising founder members accordionist and keyboardist Xosé Ramón Vázquez and gaita, sax and whistle player Xabier Bueno, with guitar and other frets, violin, bass and drums. Contravento is a leap forward from their previous releases; gone are the touches of blandness and squashy synth pads of yore, in comes a new rightness and infectious liveliness. In also come two guest singers, both of them exhibiting that appealing Galician-Asturian brief pitch-dip turn on the note-attack: Sonya Lebedynski from Susana Seivane’s band sings three numbers including the strong opener Baile De Pandeiras, and the equally impressive Beatriz Riobó delivers the closer of a very satisfying album.

      Laio is the most recent of these four bands, comprising almost the same team as backed piper Xosé Manuel Budiño on his most recent album Arredor. Its approach is more electronic and edited, though still with acoustic instruments such as Pablo Pascual’s bass clarinet and Xavier Díaz’s accordion central, joined by Pedro Pascual’s fretted instruments, Juan Hernández’s bass and programming and Leandro Deltell’s drums, and guest instrumentalists such as fiddler Jacky Molard and La Musgaña flautist Jaime Muñoz in a throbbing mix with José Trincado’s programming. In a set mixing traditional themes with new compositions that are perhaps further from the shapes of traditional Galician music than those of the other three bands, there are just a couple of songs. Guest Ma Roman delivers the poppish The Heat Of the Sun and the reflective rendering of the traditional Luneda in breathy English and Galego respectively, and the setting of the traditional Canto De Reis is constructed around the floated-in voice of traditional singer Sra. Concha do Carnal from a field recording made by Trincado in her home village whose name is the title of the album, Luneda.


© 2003 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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