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Written in fRoots issue 209, 2000


OSKORRI
Ura
Elkarlanean KD 556 (2000)

The chattering brilliance of trikitixa - diatonic accordion and tambourine music - is becoming known abroad, but an even clearer exposition of the distinctive rhythms and melodic shapes of Euskal (Basque) music is to be found in its songs. A key influence in the continuance and development of that song tradition, right from the beginning of the post-Franco upsurge in Euskal language and culture, has been the band Oskorri.
      Its twenty-third album in twenty-seven years, Ura (“Water”) is packed with the modes and melodic shapes, and the jumpy rhythms countable in fives and tens, that set Euskal music apart, and it has the freshness of a debut.
      The songs draw lyrics from past and present in Euskadi’s ongoing tradition of versifying and combine them with traditional and new-written melodies. The subject matter of love, loss or legend generally reflects rural life or timeless aspects of the human condition rather than modern specifics, but track thirteen treats not so much of flowers as of fertiliser, in the form of a cheerily straight-talking ode from a 19th century broadsheet, celebrating the dimensions of a farm-worker’s healthy bowel movements as against those of the roughage-deficient rich.
      Principal vocalist is Natxo de Felipe, while instrumentally to the seven-piece’s own lineup of guitars, mandolin, bass, violin, sax, flutes and the traditional alboka, txirula and Navarran gaita are added session txalaparta, brass and keyboards, and the trikitixa of co-producer Kepa Junkera. He’s brought in some guest musicians from abroad including percussionist Glen Vélez, clarinettist Ivo Papasov and La Bottine’s footwork man Michel Bordeleau, but rather than spreading the thing into a worldy fusion they pitch in selflessly and make it sound even more Euskal.
      The packaging is, as usual with recent Oskorri CDs, fairly elaborate, and to read the relevant booklet notes for the “hidden” fourteenth track needs a mirror. Still waggish after all these years, not tiredly recycling, and the signs are that this is quite likely to be the album that introduces Oskorri to a new audience outside Euskadi.
  

© 2000 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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