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Written in fRoots issue 196, 1999


SUSANA SEIVANE
Susana Seivane
Do Fol DF-015-CD (1999)

It’s clear from the photo on the front of the CD, and the fashion-shot poses throughout the booklet, that Susana Seivane is being seen as a bagpipe babe. Actually, she was just that; her father is one of Galicia’s most in-demand pipe-makers; a couple of family snaps show the three-year-old Susana already looking confident with a tiny gaita.
      Now she’s a grown-up ace, with a very fresh, upfront-sounding album full of interesting tunes played with great snap and sparkle on several different pitches of Galician gaita. The living, evolving tradition is evident in these shapely melodies, which include muiñeiras, jotas, pasodobles, a processional march and a sung alalá, learnt largely from living players and tune-makers or in the case of the rumba Sabeliña composed by Seivane. There’s plenty of variety in the tunes themselves, and it’s enhanced by the arrangements, which feature primarily guitar, bouzouki, diatonic accordeon, violin, hurdy-gurdy, flutes, bass and mostly traditional percussion, played by a team including four members of Milladoiro, whose Rodrigo Romaní produced and played the guitar, bouzouki and very non-obvious keyboards. Sonia Lebedynski’s very attractive singing features on two numbers, in one of which, Maneo, Seivane too makes a vocal appearance, taking the second part.
      On this showing Susana Seivane emerges as a front-ranker in the current extraordinary explosion of star gaiteiros (and now gaiteiras).
  

© 1999 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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