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Written in fRoots issue 289, 2007


MERCEDES PEÓN
Sihá
Discmedi 4325-02 (2007)

In 2000 Mercedes Peón, drawing on the backed-up creative pressure of many years of involvement with the singers, gaiteiros and life of Galicia’s villages, released her marvellous first album Isué.
      Until then most of Galicia’s female singers, fine as they are, had tended to be contributors within the ranks of largely male instrumental bands. Peón emerged as a powerful individual voice, with an astonishingly bold and wide palette of instrumental, arranging and writing approaches, and she and co-producer Nacho Muñoz took full advantage of studio possibilities. For the live gigs that followed, they put together a splendid and virtually entirely acoustic band.
      2003’s Ajrú, while still rich with unusual acoustic sounds, shows more use of programming, as does her current live band, but it’s programming of the most intelligent kind, that blends acoustic samples and real playing seamlessly and whose muscular rhythms and rich, energetic multilayers are never impositions of facile dance beats – they’re the real thing of Galician music.
On this new album, Sihá (a titling pattern seems to be emerging), as well as her magnificent, wild singing, which also has an appealing, confiding playfulness, Peón plays a range of traditional percussion, electric gaita, clarinet, kalimba, guitar and keyboards, and is joined by trumpet, accordion, guitars, violin, clarinets, bass, drums and more percussion, and Muñoz again programmes and co-produces.
      Like Ajrú it’s pretty hefty and restless, full of rhythms but never settling into a cop-out easy groove; each track bursts with shifts and surprises that show their awareness and enthusiasm for the wider musical world but whose spirit is exuberantly Galician. It’s hard to tell without checking the notes which parts are traditional, but in fact the lyrics which, like much traditional song, express both self and community in a timeless way, are Peón’s own, as is much of the music.
      She doesn’t rush into recording; Isué was a long time coming but a perfectly formed tour de force when it arrived, and it’s been four years since Ajrú. Sihá has rewarded the wait and, like its predecessors, it’s straight into my album of the year list.
You can hear some tracks at www.mercedespeon.es. Discmedi’s shop is at www.discmedi.com.


© 2007 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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