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Written in Folk Roots issue 112, 1992
 

RUPER ORDORIKA
Ez da posible
GASA 9GA-0414 (1990)

GANBARA
Buhamien Balleta
Elkar KD-304 (1992)

BENAT ACHIARY
Ene Kantu Ferde ta Urdinak (Mes Chants Verts et Bleus)
Silex Y225006 (1991)

TXOMIN ARTOLA & AMAIA ZUBIRIA
Folk-lore-sorta-1
Elkar KD-263 (1991)

It seems that a clear sign of a language doing well is the appearance of a wide variety of forms of music sung in it, rather than a few carefully-preserved "folk songs". If people are making all this music in their own language it implies that there is a sufficient audience which understands. Those of us who don't can only appreciate the form and sound, so only certain aspects, or certain performers, are popular outside the linguistic fence, and then perhaps only for one album, whereas what the performer is saying may well be crucial to the music. Euskera, the Basque language, is doing well.

Songwriter Ruper Ordorika, after a few years' recording silence, is back in action, both live and on record, and achieving the success in Euskadi that his earlier work promised. As a regular visitor to Britain, though not as far as I know to perform (yet...?) he's very well aware of musical developments here and elsewhere, so his music shows wide influences, all applied to making a hard-edged slightly Richard-Thompson-esque Euskal music. On Ez da Posible he's backed by the band, with contributors including trikitilaria Joseba Tapia and and panderojole Leturia. It's a full-blooded, intelligent and honest piece of work.

Buhamien Balleta is Ganbara's fifth album, and it's a great improvement, with a new line-up, including singer Garbiñe Benítez Enbil, which only retains Joxean Martin Zarko (vox/guit) and Alex Blasco Egurrola (keyboards) from the previous incarnation. There were good moments on earlier albums, but sometimes the lush, ingenious production seemed a bit hollow in content. This one, though, is varied, tight, sustained, melodic and mature music.

I suspect that the work of Benat Achiary, who comes from the French end of Euskadi, is hard even for many fellow Euskaldunak to figure out. On Ene Kantu Ferde Ta Urdinak he draws on a variety of European writers including Lord Byron for his lyrics, and is inspired by music from the Balearics, the Navajo and other sources as well as his native land. Much of his singing is powerful improvised and vocally acrobatic declamatory intoning, accompanied by his friction drum and other percussion with occasional saxes, accordion, piano, electric guitar and what sounds like a burst of animal noises.

Amaia Zubiria is a great asset to music in Euskera, seen by some in the UK a couple of years ago with her regular musical partner guitarist and electro-acoustic musician Pascal Gaigne, with whom she's made several fine albums, including the recent compilation of their film music, Zineman. Some in Euskadi see their subtle and lyrically powerful music as not "folk music", even though it is mature, intelligent and in Euskera, presumably because most of it isn't "herrikoia" ("traditional"). However she has a parallel career in a popular duo with Txomin Artola, a country-tinged singer-songwriter with a string of well-made and attractive solo albums who was in Britain on the Christy Moore tour last year. Their duo album Folk-lore-sorta-1 is of traditional songs, lightly accompanied by Txomin's acoustic guitar, Alan Griffin's flutes and whistles and Joxan Goikoetxea's accordion and synths.

© 1992 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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