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Written in fRoots issue 211/212, 2001


MERCEDES PEÓN
Isué
Resistencia RESCD 106 (2000)

Totally occupied with the deep tradition of Galicia, singer, gaiteira and pandeiretera Mercedes Peón, while making tantalising guest appearances with Xosé Manuel Budiño and others, has resisted recording an album for years, but here at last is her solo debut, and it’s hugely bold, a rallying cry for modern Galician roots music.
      The magnificent raw energy of her singing takes the lead from the start. A wild scream unleashes a swirl of squealing gaitas, thumping and rattling pandeiretas, edgy zanfona, shrill pandeiretera group vocals, woody bass clarinet, programmed and slithering electric bass,
      Mingling traditional sources and her own creation, drawing in perspectives from kindred musics, particularly North African, it’s a dazzle of constantly shifting pace and approach, through quirky playfulness, interjected characterful speaking voices, flashes of techno-dance groove such as the pacey, insistent Sombra E Luz, or spacious simplicity, for example, the soaring, passionate, personal song of wonder Marabilla recorded in an A Coruña church accompanied just by accordion. Liberatingly inspired in the free use of tradition and technology with constantly inventive, arresting production largely by Peón herself with keyboardist Nacho Muñoz and guitarist Pablo Carrera, it’s completely present-day but without time-stamping novelties.
      It certainly delivers the stuff of what’s likely to be widespread world music DJ airplay, but it does it on its own terms, with depths of melody, colour, texture and intelligence far from world-tinted ambient thud’n’tizz or celtist-washy-diddly. There’s never a sense of doing something because it’s smart, and no embarrassed rocking up or rounding off and prettifying of the rough edges for present-day consumption; on the contrary they’re revelled in and flaunted, as in the greatest rock’n’roll though nothing like it, and there’s a strong communication of human warmth for the people who’ve possessed and themselves reshaped these songs.
      The title means “that’s it”, and it is, a jubilant example of what seems to me to be a primary aim in what gets called roots music: to be simultaneously an expression of the deeply understood guts of tradition and of the charismatically individual.
  

© 2000 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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