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Written in Folk Roots issue 160, 1996

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Euskal Herriko Musika - Music From The Basque Country
Elkar KD-416/417 (1996)

TAPIA ETA LETURIA BAND
Tapia Eta Leturia Band
Elkar KD-412 (1995)

JÚLIO PEREIRA & KEPA JUNKERA
Lau Eskutara
Elkar Triki KD-428 (1995)

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Triki 1 - Diatonic Dynamite
Elkar Triki KD-431 (1995)

OSKORRI
Landalan
Elkar KD-414 (1995)

Here’s a whole bunch of recorded evidence that music in Euskadi, the Basque country, is on a high.

      In the Basque creative upsurge since the death of Franco Euskera-language record label and book publisher Elkar has been a major player, particularly at the developmental end of tradition-infused music. There are other, smaller labels releasing interesting music too, but so many leading performers have recorded for Elkar that the sampler Euskal Herriko Musika, a double CD with three booklets giving artist information and complete lyrics, all with translations in Castellano, French and English, makes an excellent introduction to the feel of recent Euskal music, and gives a picture of a place of living tradition where folk and popular aren’t mutually exclusive terms.

      For some years now the two hottest young players in the trikitixa (diatonic accordion) tradition, Joseba Tapia and Kepa Junkera, have been constantly vying with one another (in an amicable way), writing tunes and winning competitions, but they haven’t stopped there, forging on into other, and different, territories.
      For their part, Tapia and Leturia made a considered step into pop by forming a street-rough rock band. The presence of kit drums tends to obscure the joyful clatter of Leturia’s panderoa (tambourine, skittered skilfully across the finger-ends), and for a while the band appeared, well, a bit brutal, but it moved the duo into a much more commanding position in the outdoor gig circuit, ideas seem to have fallen into place, and with Tapia eta Leturia Band, the fourth album, in which various band members contribute songs rather than it all stemming from the duo, they’ve arrived at a uniquely Euskal pop form, energetic, rappy and punky, and just the thing for getting an audience pogoing on the cobbles. Extraordinary, vivid lyrics too.

      Kepa Junkera, like Tapia, shows up on a lot of other people’s albums and projects, including in his case collaborations with a variety of musicians including John Kirkpatrick. The latest of these, on Elkar’s trikitixa-dedicated Triki label, is with Portuguese mandolin, cavaquinho and braguesa maestro Júlio Pereira, improvising around their own instrumental compositions on lightly multi-tracked fretted instruments and trikitixa with one vocal item from Pereira’s regular performing colleague Minela and a touch of txalaparta percussion. The result is lively and intricate, drawing on Kepa’s Basque pace and energy and the ringing fluidity of Pereira’s fado-inflected playing.

      Diatonic Dynamite makes an excellent overview of and introduction to the sound of trikitixa - the rolling staccato, reiterated triplets, trilling tambourine, hair-raising ascending vocal ululation called irrintzi, and sense of enormous fun. Here’s a sampling of all the trikitixa players and groups, both mainstream traditional and developmental, in the label’s current catalogue, including Tapia eta Leturia, in more traditional style as well as with the band, and Kepa in traditional trio format with Zabaleta and Motriku, in his solo album context with a jazzy/rocky band, and with Pereira. The accordion hasn’t been around for long, relatively speaking, so each generation of players tends to take the tradition a noticeable step forward; by “traditional” I guess I really mean “nearer to the previous generation’s style”.
      It was the players before and during the Euskera-suppressive Franco years who built and maintained the platform from which the post-Franco generation ascend, and there exist recordings of them too, most made in the vinyl and cassette days for Elkar, IZ and other labels. The album opens with members of that generation, the trio Maurizia, Leon eta Basilio, but the emphasis in general here is on the impressive dynamism and technique of the new wave, who aren’t only demonstrative of Euskadi’s musical vitality but also represent probably the country’s most potentially exportable musical commodity.

      The band Oskorri was one of new Euskal music’s prime movers, and 25 years on it continues to progress. Landalan, its 16th album, opens with a bit of north coast fusion, Galiziara Noa, ("I’m off to Galicia") reflecting on the way each region has its merits and demerits. Much of what the band means to people resides in the lyrics, predominantly dealing with the people, places and language of Euskadi - nationalist with a small non-violent “n”. Some songs are traditional, some by band members, the main lyricist being Natxo de Felipe, one of the leading poetic voices in the reassertion of Euskera after its unbanning. The birth and growth of the band around “a fat man”, as de Felipe refers to himself, features in a band-creation-myth song, Amaiaren Ipuina.
      Musically Oskorri draws on traditional melodic and rhythmic shapes; instrumentation is a mixture of traditional and light rock, without a drumkit. It isn’t the sort of sound to leap into the world music chart - indeed the underpinning acoustic guitar and electric bass combination sounds a bit stodgy by current standards - but it is what it is, speaking articulately to those with the language, putting the familiar into songs and so elevating it in popular consciousness. The rest of us can only read the translations, and that just isn’t the same.


© 1996 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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