- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -

- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -



- Back to Reviews Introduction page -



Written in Folk Roots 1996

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Navidad Tradicional Española

Sonifolk 20077 (1995)

Pedro Vaquero has been recording traditional music in the regions of Spain for many years. In releasing such recordings on his Sonifolk label his objective has been not to compile a chronicle of disappearing traditions but to keep the music current, to keep throwing it back into circulation.
      To this end Sonifolk’s Cantes Del Pueblo series, of straightforward, unelaborated recordings, was primarily released on cassette and sold cheaply at bars, bus stations and other places where people gather in the source regions of the music - local access to local music. Navidad Tradicional Española is a selection of Christmas-related material gathered together on CD from recordings of seven ensembles, from Tarifa, Algeciras, Toledo, Guadalajara, Jaén, Valladolid and Burgos.
      There’s no Yule-tide saccharin or season-of-purchase sickly sweetness about this music - the vocals are full-blooded, the traditional percussion instruments clatter and rattle, a friction drum grunts. Not Christmas kitsch, or even a re-folkification of the usual carols. These are songs untouched by the sticky hands of choral arrangers and carol collections - this is the music for a season when people celebrate with people.


© 1996 Andrew Cronshaw
 


You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
fRoots -
The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 


For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL


- Back to Reviews Introduction page -