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Written in fRoots issue 309, 2009
 

OREKA TX
Nömadak TX
World Village 468085 (2009)

KEPA JUNKERA
Etxea
Warner Spain 51865 0485 2 (2008)

Oreka TX – Harkaitz Martinez and Igor Otxoa – is Euskadi’s leading duo on the txalaparta, a game-like percussion encounter between two people that in its much invigorated present-day form is often dazzlingly intricate.
     Generally players use tuned planks but the principle can extend to other hittable materials. The pair made what sounds like an interesting journey and documentary film in which they performed, and collaborated with local musicians, in Norway, Mongolia, India and the Sahara, using txalapartas of wood, stone, ice, air-tubes, even cardboard.
     The vocalists are Berber, Indian, Mongolian and Euskal; this is probably the last recording by the famous late Euskal singer-poet Mikel Laboa. Among the percussionists is Norway’s ‘ice-man’ Terje Isungset, and some of the other instrumentalists on the CD are from the various cultures, on morin-khuur, jew’s-harp, gottuvadhyam and sitar, but the majority are Euskal musicians presumably added in the studio back home.
     The album isn’t a soundtrack, but constructed in the studio using some of the recordings made on the trip, and though the foreign contributors were mostly recorded in the field it’s a very clean, programmed sampling-sounding affair with - as often with percussionist-composed albums – rather rudimentary melodic composition, and it smells more of the studio than the sense of place, contrasting cultures and adventure that one supposes is better conveyed in the film.

     For ten years Oreka TX were members of Kepa Junkera’s band, but they’re not involved in his latest recording project, Etxea (‘Home’). For this he plays some touches of txalaparta himself, as well as his first instrument, trikitixa (melodeon), but it isn’t an instrumental showcase, indeed he doesn’t play at all on some tracks. It’s devoted to traditional Euskal songs sung, in Euskara, by a collection of many of Spain and Portugal’s best known roots vocalists. They include Estrella Morente, Dulce Pontes, Mafalda Arnauth, Uxía, Teresa Salgueiro, Lluís Llach, Lidia Pujol, Ana Belén, Tito Paris, Eliseo Parra, Maria Del Mar Bonet, Vitorino, Manuel Luna, Amancio Prada, Guadi Galego and twenty-seven more, plus fifteen instrumentalists. Because of the overall Euskal nature of the material, whose distinctive character, variously soft and flowing or jauntily jolly, has little or no Arabic influence, the result is less exotic-sounding than much Iberian song, and individual styles are to some extent subsumed, with the singers not using their accustomed language or melodic structures. To work out who’s singing often needs a look at the pair of booklets in the double CD package.
     It’s a plump package, but the arrangements aren’t big, massed-guest opuses. They’re made using just two or three instruments at a time, without bass or drums, and they don’t strongly feature Euskal traditional instruments; one of the most prevalent sounds in the accompaniments is piano. The songs are the thing.
     Bringing in all these singers from outside gives the songs new perspectives and the project an angle, but essentially, in sound, it’s a collection of popular Euskal songs with clearly-stated melodies and uncomplicated arrangements that’s likely to be very well received in Euskadi, and hearing them from the mouths of familiar artists could spread some of its song culture into other parts of Iberia and beyond.
    
     www.worldvillagemusic.com, www.kepajunkera.com


© 2009 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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