Spanish regional music: Extremadura and Aragon

My only reason for putting these very different regions together – Extremadura near to Portugal and Aragon in north eastern Spain – will become plain.

Aragonese culture finds its roots in Celtic, French and especially Moorish influence. Instruments include rattles and the guitarro, a unique kind of guitar from the Baroque period. Rarely used as a solo instrument, the guitarro mostly has five strings and Alexander Sanchez has recovered one of the earliest examples from Zaragoza. Early music in Extremadura is characterised by a melancholy sound and by the predominance of the zambomba drum which -intriguingly - is played by pulling on a rope inside the drum. (How I wonder?). Perhaps the sadness of their folk music reflects the fact that this is traditionally Spain’s most impoverished region, many of its people leaving for Latin America, and taking their musical traditions with them.

It’s Jota music that unites these otherwise very different regions. Originating in the southern part of Aragon this dance music with its changing tonalities and complicated repeated rhythms is popular across Spain. Played on tambourines, castanets and flutes, the music also uses the human voice as an instrument. The Jota Zaragozana is fast and danced with raised arms, whereas in southern Aragon the music is slow and elegant. In Extremadura the Jota is played with triangles, castanets, guitars, tambourines, accordions and zambombas.

Next post – Castile, and then, though we will come back to regional variations at some later date, we can move on to other matters. By the way, my sources in these posts are from the New Grove Dictionary of Music (NGDM) and masses of stuff on the internet, one of my sources being http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music.

Spanish regional music: Galicia

This fascinating region to the north west of Spain, with its cliffs and beautiful and - to me – mysterious coastline, sometimes forgotten by much of Spain ( except when its beaches and fish industry were ruined by oil spillage ) is home to a Celtic-derived culture and folk music. Ortigueira’s Festival del Mundo Celta is one of the more important of several local festivals which celebrate the area’s Celtic influence.

We know that there were Celtic settlers here in 600 B.C. There may be however more nostalgia than reality in claiming an ancient origin for the region’s music. Susana Seivane, a popluar gateria, says ‘I think (the Celtic moniker) is a label, to sell more. What we do is Galician music’.

Carlos Nunez might not agree. His book ‘A Immanade Das Estrelas(1996) has sold more than 100,000 copies since published in 1996. An artist much in demand and a virtuoso of the characteristic bagpipe (gaita), he has worked with The Chieftains and Sinead O’Connor and also with Ry Cooder in the U.S.A. and Cuba’s Vieja Triva Santiaguera. (Folk meets Pop yet again!).

Drum and pipe groups as well as the gaita are the most common accompaniment to Galician folk music – and at some time in this series we must gather together some of these distinctive instruments. The most traditional examples of popular folk music are believed to be chant-based songs of some antiquity. These ‘alalas’ may be closely related to Gregorian chanting, though some scholars apparently also suggest a Greek origin or Phoenician rowing songs. Whenever we look at Spanish music we meet history….

…as we shall find next time when we look at Aragon and Extramdura.
B.R.

Regional Variations 2 - A Basque Encounter

Change of plan - Galicia next post, not this one. We have been staying in one of the fascinating villages that hug the Oiartzun esturary close to San Sebastian. Though ship-building is over, the village is still part of a busy port and much of the distinctive life of the community remains centered around the sea. Our host invited us to eat with him and his partner in the Society of which he is a member. This strongly male enclave with its splendid kitchen ( in which women are not allowed) had a plentiful supply cooking oils and wines, including the typical txakoli wine of the region. As we walked along the narrow road to the rooms where the Society meets, we could hear traditional Basque music from the local cafes. We ate a fine merluza (hake) which we had bought in the market earlier in the day. The Basque country has the reputation of being the finest place to eat in Spain as we discovered.

This Society was founded over fifty years ago and we were told that meals often end with the singing of local fishermen’s songs – beginning quietly as the tales of the sea are told but ending in full volume with enthusiastic thumping of tables. Our host translated words from one such song. ‘Being quiet in the harbour, being quiet in the harbour, there is a beautiful white boat on the water, protected by the north star in the sky…’ There are four verses which follow the fortunes of the fish and end with the wealth they have brought the fishermen and the bibulous pleasure with which they have celebrated them!

We learned that the venue of this particular Society is under threat. But for as long as it continues to meet, this mixture of good food, wine and song will surely be the mark of its companionship.

B.R.

Basque music

I mentioned Basque folk music in my last post. Always uniquely itself, this ‘stateless nation’ between N.E. Spain and South France has preserved and cherished its music through the years. For some time! – a 22,000 year old flute made from the bone of a bird has been discovered in Izturitz and elsewhere a trumpet dating from the Azilica period.

But not until 1870 when Chants Populaires was published, were the songs and music of the region made widely available. Folk music and the improvisations that are characteristic of the region, have became a possession of the people and a means of identifying and celebrating their language and their culture.

In the twentieth century a series of competitions began that continue to this day. There are colleges devoted to the preservation and development of national music. The annual competition has been revived in four districts of the southern Basque country, and whereas in the Franco years, song and dance were treasured secretly and became synonymous with resistance, now traditional music and musicians are in great demand. The Basque choral tradition, one of the strongest in Europe, is immensely vigorous and makes a great contribution to the culture of the region. In the south a mystery play is produced in a different village every year, supported by typical music and dance. As many as 5,000 people crowd into the narrow valleys to watch and listen to these open-air performances.

I made a rather sour reference to pop music last time. One of the achievements of the Basque country is that some well known performers have brought together popular and traditional music, to the advantage of both and to the enjoyment of many.

…and next time we travel to the N.W., to Gallicia.

B.R.

Sounding Off

I’ve been asked by the Euroresidente team to do a regular article on Classical Music and this is the first of what I hope will be a useful and enjoyable theme with many variations– and comments, hopefully.

What sort of music and from where? The beginning has to be Spanish music because of where you have found me. But even before that there’s this problem of definition. ‘Classical’, can be many things but mostly it means music that has some recognised form to it, some acceptance over a period of time and although it can be old or new, certainly we usually mean it has a serious rather than only an entertaining purpose. So, out with pop? Yes, I think so, but you can put me straight on this, for what we now call classical was often popular music in its own day and has got grave (no, not grey) with the years. Even so I don’t see that Elton or Robbie are for ever, the way that Haydn and Scarlatti have proved to be. So the music we shall be exploring will be the sort that may have a past and is likely to have a future.

Spain has a rich musical history, much of it distinctive to the regions that existed before Spain was an entity, or originating from a cultural tradition such as the Jewish Sephardic music of medieval times. We still have some of the texts of the mainly romantic music that came from that community, but like Moorish music of the same time, the melodies have been lost. There was no one around to write down the music as there was in the folk song revival in Britain in the early 1900’s, although more recently there have been efforts to re-imagine some of that tradition(http://www.cryptojews.com/clearing_up_ladino.htm.There have been more successful efforts to halt the decline of traditional bagpipe music in Galilicia, and Basque folk music called trikitrixa based on the accordion as performed by people such a Joseba Tapia, has survived the years.

More about the regions next time.

B.R.