- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw Facebook -

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in fRoots issue 372, June 2014


SONDESEU
Danzas Brancas
Fol 100FOL 1075 (2013)

CARLOS NÚÑEZ
Inter-Celtic
RCA Victor 88843033262 (2014)

Mighty uplifting, blood-stirring melody-rich music from the – just a mo’ while I count them – nearly fifty member Galician folk orchestra Sondeseu. A dozen female singers, five gaitas, six fiddles, six harps, seven hurdy-gurdies, three flutes, three bouzoukis (OK, that’s a new Galician folk instrument), five percussionists and a double bass.
     It could be an unwieldy or stolid, regimented beast, but its instigator and leader, ex-Milladoiro harpist Rodrigo Romaní, is a master of large-scale arranging, light and shade and dynamics. He’s chosen strong, memorable melodies, most of them traditional plus one by hurdy–gurdy section co-ordinator Anxo Pintos of Berrogüetto, and developed them into a glorious, soaring, surging celebration and shared experience. Galician music suits this approach; unlike some other European musics, it’s very much a communal thing, of singing together in lively jubilant unison to the sound of gaitas, pandeiretas and more.
As I cooked dinner after a long day at the computer-face, it made a physical thrill rise through me. That’s what music can do.

     The Carlos Núñez compilation Inter-Celtic makes a pretty good follow-on from that in terms of bright energy. Not as specifically Galician as Sondeseu, as its title suggests it’s a reminder of the gaita and whistle star’s connections and collaborations with music and musicians from countries further north (and west to South America), in recordings from 1996 to 2014 featuring some of the many on whose albums Núñez has played or have played on his They include Altan, Ry Cooder, Dan Ar Braz, Sharon Shannon and Donal Lunny, and of course several with the Chieftains who, by inviting him onto their stages, gave him a wider-world springboard. The sixteen tracks on the audio CD make a well-sequenced, exuberant flow, and then there’s a DVD of eleven numbers in front of thousands at various big excitingly-filmed espectaculos over the years in France and Galicia.

www.folmusica.com 
www.sonymusic.fr 



© 2014 Andrew Cronshaw
 

You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
     For readers/listeners across the Atlantic, CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 

For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -