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Written in fRoots issue 353/354, Nov/Dec 2012


OS CEMPÉS
Tentemozo
Fol 100FOL 1060 (2012)

Many albums are well put together and do very efficiently pretty much what one would expect. But the ones that refresh the perhaps jaded reviewer, this one at least, are those whose character jumps out, alive and perhaps grubby, and transcends all of that, and draws one into the why, the how, the who and the what.
     Os Cempés tend to make that sort of album. Since their formation in the mid 1990s they’ve never seemed bothered about competing in the international stakes but have trodden their own path, working in a variety of ways with Galician music in Galicia with no apparent regard for how it sounds from the outside. Which, to my ears, makes it all the more appealing and characterful. Old-fashioned, perhaps, certainly full of the shapely tunes, songs and sounds of Galician traditional music – Antón Varela’s skirling gaita, rattle-pocking pandeiretas, hurdy-gurdy, strong voices frm Serxio Ces, Oscar Fernández, as well as sax or clarinet, plus a large bunch of instrumental and vocal guests from the folk music school Escola Livre da MPG at the Folque centre for Galician popular music, and yes, there’s Fernando Barroso’s celto-bouzouki in there for stringy impulsion, but the textural weight of the rest puts it in its place.
     Full-blooded, human and likeable.

     www.folmusica.com


© 2012 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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