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Written in fRoots issue 277, 2006


MUTHIKO ALAIAK FANFARREA
Music From The Basque Country
Arc EUCD 1976 (2006)

Once in a long while an album comes along that pulls things back into focus for me. This one reminds me of the feeling and spirit, a unison of music and place, that I found when as a teenager I first encountered a Galician fiesta. This isn’t Galician, it’s Basque, and it goes to the heart of music-driven celebration in Euskal Herria just as did the voices, gaitas, conchas and drums in the streets and bars of a Galician fishing village.
      Comprising chromatic button-accordions, brass, the three-hole tabor-pipes txistu and txirula, alboka, fiddle, gaita (not bagpipe but dulzaina-like folk oboe), txalaparta, bass drum and snare, Muthiko Alaiak Fanfarrea is the band that accompanies the dance team of traditional culture group Muthiko Alaiak, founded as a dance group in 1931.
      Anyone under the blinkered illusion that Morris dancing is a peculiarly English thing needs only to look at Euskal traditional dance and see there the white outfits, ribbons, bells, sticks swords and hankies, or see across Europe folk customs that involve at least some of those components, or the Native American dancers of New Mexico whose tradition derives partly from those of the Iberian invaders.
      The Fanfarre plays memorable tunes most of which could be danced by a Morris side; indeed some contain phrases also found in Morris tunes. Arin-arins, fandangos, marches, dance-songs, polkas, or a makildantza from Zuberoa in which girls dance over crossed sticks. They also do their versions of tunes written by leading representatives of the ongoing tradition, including Oskorri, Kepa, Gozategi and Benito Lertxundi. Their sound is a joyous blend of village brass band with the high, edgy shrilling of txirula, strident buzz of gaita and alboka, the reedy squash of accordion and woody clatter of txalaparta. It’s unselfconscious, not studio-calculated, not punctiliously tuned (it’s nigh impossible to be so with this combination of instruments) nor impeccably virtuosic, and it’s splendidly, celebratorily enjoyable and Euskal.


© 2006 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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