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Written in fRoots issue 245, 2003


VARIOUS ARTISTS
Zubigainekoa – Festival Music Of The Basques Of Navarra And Hasparren
PAN Ethnic Series PAN 2084 (2001)

BIDAIA
Oihan
Resistencia RESCD 144 (2003)

Even though it was recorded in just three locations in just two of the seven regions of Euskal Herria, the Basque country, the recordings made by Ad and Lucia Linkels in 1988 and 1989 provide a pretty good primer to many of the traditional sounds to be heard, then and still, in the streets of its villages and cities. Outdoors, during celebrations, that is; it’s not a folk-song collection and doesn’t set out to cover the songs and music of the home. Nor does it include any accordion-and-tambourine music, trikitixa, though of course in many parts of Euskadi that’s a key sound.
      In Hasparren, near Baiona/Bayonne in Lapurdi, one of the three Basque regions that are in France, the Linkels met Txomin Larre and Ramuntxo Partarrieu, who introduced them to animal horns, joaldunak bells and the plank-duets of txalaparta, and also to Peïo Duhaldo who played a selection of some typical dance music forms – arin-arin, biribilketa, aurresku, fandango, banako and the 5/8 zortziko - on txistu and drum.
      The rest of the recordings were made in Nafarroa/Navarra, the only one of Spain’s four Basque regions not administered by the Basque government. In Pamplona/Iruña they recorded in the streets during the famous San Fermín fiesta; we get bands of gaiteros (not bagpipers, but players of the dultzaina), txistularis, and mass singing of the fiesta’s closing song Pobre De Mí. In the village of Lesaka, during its own sanfermines, there are more txistularis, brass bands and drummers, playing for flag-wavers and the figures and processional dances of the bell-wearing male stick-dancers, espatadantzaris, and for the boys and girls linked by handkerchiefs in the processional neska dantza. And yes, if some of that suggests connections with morris dancing, of course there are, and in Euskadi it’s all in a much more living, exuberant state; not an embarrassing curious survival, but what the whole population of a town engages in with gusto when it’s that time of year.

      The Baiona based band Bidaia is a product of another rich stream in Basque music, that of individual lyric song. In parallel with similar developments in other parts of Europe, bands began to form in the 1970s that drew on traditional song and added to it new material and wider instrumentation including, for example, guitars, often blending in the sounds of Basque instruments such as trikitixa or the twin-reeded high-pitched horn-pipe, alboka.
      Bidaia consists of singer, guitarist and player of alboka and other wind instruments Mixel Ducau, American-born but Basque-integrated singer and hurdy-gurdy player Caroline Phillips, bassist Ritxi Salaberria and percussionist Jabi Area. While of course like all traditions that of Euskadi has its reflective, intimate side, in the past some Basque bands have gone for a smooth, sometimes perhaps bland sound on record, but there’s recently been a welcome move to a more up-front approach that better conveys the celebratory energy of much of the music. On its debut album, and indeed live, Bidaia is a prime example of that. Led by Ducau and Phillips’ strong Euskera vocals with a well-varied power-house of shrill reeds and hurdy-gurdy driven by Ducau’s guitar and the very agile rhythm section, what jumps out of their music, partly traditional-sourced and partly new, are the melodic shapes and lurching, skipping asymmetric rhythms that are so distinctively Basque.


© 2003 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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