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Written in fRoots issue 253, 2004


SUSANA SEIVANE
Mares De Tempo
Boa Colección Do Fol 35 (2004)

FAUSTINO SANTALICES
Gravacións Históricas de Zanfona 1927-1949
Boa Colección Do Fol 32 (2004)

Whereas the first Susana Seivane album had the gaiteira surrounded by a team of musicians chosen for the recording, some of whom went on to constitute her live band, most of this third album has a muscular live-band sound. With her gaitas there’s the quintet of Xurxo Iglesias on bouzouki, Brais Maceiras on trikitixa-influenced diatonic accordion, Iván Laxe’s electric bass, Carlos Freire’s percussion and Teresa Sayas’ drumkit, with guests contributing flutes, sax, violin, keyboards and touches of harp, trumpet and musical saw, with Seivane often adding in her tambourine and other traditional percussion. The kit drumming is hefty but well-integrated, and it’s snappy, agile stuff that, apart from the overdubs, for the most part is pretty much the sort of thing they’d do in their storming live show, even in one case including a scrub finish.
      But between the instrumentals there’s the blossoming of Seivane as a singer. There are five songs, including a big arrangement featuring wind player Xavier Paxariño and massed vocals in a reprise of the traditional Xota De Liñares, which was sung on the first Seivane album by former band vocalist Sonia Lebedynski. There’s also a reworking of Muiñeira De Alén from the second album. Berrogüetto singer Guadi Galego wrote and co-sings Tempo De Pensar. The final track (apart from the nippy “extra track” coda of a gaita and accordion duet) is Seivane’s setting of poet Guillermo Diaz’s lyrics in Miña Virxe, Meu Amor to a big swung rock pulse with soaring jazzy soprano sax. Her voice is strong, with the mature edge of Galician women singers of the previous generation plus a modern awareness, and it’s clear that now her singing and song-making have emerged they’re likely to be a major aspect of her music from here on.
      The DVD bulking up the CD’s packaging is a disappointment, a ragbag, promo-like affair of snippets and aimless video-clips with mostly unsynchronised overdubbed sound.

      It’s good to see a record company giving archive treasures the same high standard of packaging as it does to those by living, young and one assumes bigger-selling artists. No DVD for Faustino Santalices - he died in 1960 – but, like Seivane, he merits an up-market Digipak. Born in Ourense province in 1877, he learned to play gaita, and indeed later wrote a book about it, but it is for his work with the hurdy-gurdy - making, playing, writing a book about and beginning the revival of the instrument, and using it to accompany his singing - that he is best known.
      His self-accompanied singing of two songs, and his playing of gaita, in harmony with another gaita accompanied by bombo and tamboril, was recorded for the Regal label in either – opinions differ - 1927 or 1929. In 1949 he went back into a studio to make recordings for release on Columbia. All those recordings, totalling sixteen tracks, are gathered together here, plus a processional march and alborada from the later session that were unreleased until now. Just how rare these classic recordings had become is shown by the fact that, while the instrumentals are largely familiar from the performances of others throughout the century, some of the alalás, alboradas, ballads and other songs in them are absent from the repertoires of today’s revivalists.
      Santalices’ singing has an infectious robust strength and directness, his hurdy-gurdy playing is lively and articulate, and the melodies and performances are fine and memorable. This is a great opportunity to listen back through the years to a man who demonstrated the worth of an instrument nearly extinct in his country and whose singing and playing is right from the heart of Galician traditional music, past and present. These recordings are as important to it as are the recordings of Joseph Taylor to English music (and those latter are, as far as I know, shamefully unavailable on CD).


© 2004 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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