Paco de Lucía

 

Infernuko Auspoa - Kepa, Zabaleta eta Motriku - (1986)
Triki Up - Kepa, Zabaleta eta Imanol - (1990)
Trikitixa Zoom (1991)
Trans-Europe Diatonique - Kepa Junkera, John Kirkpatrick and Riccardo Tesi - (1993)
Kalejira Al-buk (1994)
Lau Eskutara - Kepa Junkera and Julio Pereira - (1995)
Leonen Orroak - Kepa Junkera and Ibon Koteron - (1996)
Bilbao 00:00h (1998)
Tricky! (2000)
Maren (2001)
K (2003)
Atlhetic Bihotzez (2004)  

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Spanish Basque
KEPA JUNKERA is the Basque country's most notable young musician, having first visited this country in a trio - Trans-Europe Diatonique - with John Kirkpatrick (UK) and Riccardo Tesi (Italy). From an early age Kepa showed an interest in the diatonic accordion (trikitixa in Basque) and started playing it from an early age. His dream came true when the great Basque group OSKORRI took an interest in the young lad with the lightning fingers on the 'triki' buttons, and invited him to play and record with them - he is still there! His career soon blossomed as he won numerous top level awards and as he travelled around the world to delight audiences. He has a boundless energy to submerge himself in projects and as such he has recorded and travelled with many great musicians including The Chieftains (Ireland); La Bottine Souriante (Québec); Carlos Nuñez (Spain), amongst others. With his own band (voted as best live act in Spain) he adds an exciting new dimension to his music with the use of the 'txalaparta' - wooden poles/sticks beaten on horizontal planks of wood - which add a drive and depth to the music.

Carlos Piñana

Carlos Piñana was born in Cartagena in 1976, into a flamenco family. His father, Antonio Piñana, is a guitarist of orthodox flamenco and obviously led his son to compete for guitar prizes. By 1998 he won the "Ramón Montoya" National prize of Córdoba and the "Sabicas" first prize in the National Festival of Young Flamenco

Read an interview in flamencoworld.com

KID BIG DRUM HELL

The racially mixed sound was needing an urgent renovation. The charisma of Jairo, the Kid, has shaken the foundations of a mestization anchored in the names of always. From Santa Coloma, the genuine Barcelonian suburbs, Mr. Bombo Hell has the world on his feet.
The rotten racially mixed sound that has generated Barcelona to the heat of the immigration of the district of the Raval a long time ago it stopped being as exciting as the section of World music of the BBC wants to make believe to us. In spite of the success of Eyes of Wizard, Macaco, or 08001, the sound that the parameters of the fusion and the tradition have drawn under requests to shouts a change that, one of two: or it is sent to the absolute comercialidad, or aims above and it proven new prescriptions that obtain a revision with face and eyes. In order to break with the Barcelonian dominion, and to insufflate of impudence to the mestization, it arrives “We go that we go away” (Nomadic Musics, 05) of Kid Big drum Hell, old Trimelón member, ex--street cleaner in the Carmel, and musician to wander about with pleasure.

An atypical personage with a form to compose still more atypical music: “I never feel to compose - he assures. Without going more far, “World snail” (a Trimelón subject) I did it while it swept the streets of the Car it to me. Melodía left a day to me that went of joint. Now the together rate and the letter arise to me, sometimes in the sound tests or improvising while I touch. I put myself to touch, and they leave to me”. And it is that its debut in length has made it mature and places as a perfect crossing between Jose Feliciano, Manu Ciao and macarra of district that seems to be. The fame, for that reason, has not risen to him at the top: “when it touched in bars was happy and for me already it was sufficient. ”

José Angel Hevia Velasco, now known to the world as Hevia, has made quite a name for himself in the bagpipe world. Whether you love or hate his innovations (electronic bagpipes that have no physical drones and don't use actual reeds), he has certainly brought the bagpipe to the consciousness of thousands of new devotees in his native Spain and throughout Europe. His album Tierra de Nadie, and the unlikely hit single, "Busindre Reel," have made him a household word at home and abroad. In the wake of that success, Hevia released this video, recorded live in concert, before an adoring audience in Madrid.

It's hard to complain about the music on Live in Madrid. Hevia surrounds himself with an eight-piece band that features at least four percussionists. This may be a bit of overkill, as his sister María José Hevia, one of the percussion players, is completely inaudible about half the time but is clearly a talented musician when you can hear her. Other instruments you'll hear are fiddle, didgeridoo, oud, guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards. The band goes to town on versions of Hevia's Tierra de Nadie material, including "Busindre Reel," "La Linea Trazada," "Barganaz," and the Ramón Prada composition "Sobrepena." Some tracks feature Hevia's flute backed by roaring didgeridoo, swirling fiddle, and bass; others are fronted by his smooth-sounding electronic bagpipes, which look strangely bald without drones; and a surprising number feature the low whistle as the main instrument. Whatever he's playing, Hevia is clearly a master musician, and all the music is superb.

One of the nicest facets of this video is that Hevia invites some traditional musicians along to share the limelight. He is particularly generous to Collectivu Ethnográfico Muyeres, a group of women who sing in strong, sharp voices and play the pandero, or square tambourine. They provide most of the vocals on the video and are introduced by Hevia right after his opening number. Hevia also invites along a large pipe band made up entirely of his students, who join in on some tunes.

If there is a fault here, it's clearly that some of the arrangements get too busy. At one point, when the eight-piece and the pipe band are suddenly joined by what sounds like a boys' choir, it gets downright turgid. But Hevia keeps most of it lively and interesting without overloading us too much. For an encore, he picks up his good old acoustic bagpipes and treats the audience to some rapid-fire improvisation; it's a great way to prove he's not dependant on any of the bombast or electronics to make stirring, beautiful music.

Celtic music is found in two regions of Spain - Asturias and Galicia - both situated in the northwest corner of the country. In fact, according to researchers from Oxford University, the original inhabitants and the Celts of the British Isles would have migrated from these regions in the Iberian Peninsula around 5000 BCE:
"People of Celtic ancestry were thought to have descended from tribes of central Europe. Professor Sykes, who is soon to publish the first DNA map of the British Isles, said: "About 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to push up the Channel. Before they arrived, there were some human inhabitants of Britain but only a few thousand in number. These people were later subsumed into a larger Celtic tribe... The majority of people in the British Isles are actually descended from the Spanish."
The music of the region of Asturias in northern Spain has more in common with Brittany, Wales and Ireland than Spanish music from Castille or Andalusia. Traditional Asturian instruments include bagpipes, called the Gaita, the harp loom and Asturian drums.
Jose Angel Hevia is an Asturian bagpiper and flautist who combines Celtic and traditional Asturian elements in his music. Hevia began playing the Asturian bagpipe as a young boy and has acheived great success with his albums on Spanish Celtic music

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Only five years ago, a band started in Galicia with the feeling of being just a cry of a minority culture, a culture that was always second to "popular" music. As unbelievable as it is, but in these five years it all changed in Galicia: The "Scream from the Ghetto" of folk music was heard all over Spain, and today the definite number 1 in Galicia is not rock, but folk music...

It was in 1995 when Matto Congrio split. This band is from this day's perspective one of the really important and innovative bands of the new Galician folk revival, mixing with their impressive line-up Galician Celtic music with influences of diverse styles and musical regions. The album of Matto Congrio from 1992 directly starts with a special version of a traditional Muiñeira in a Reggae/Folk Rock treatment, and during the rest of the 10 tunes there are lots of other surprises, including a tune featuring the uillean pipes of Paddy Moloney counterplaying against a Galician gaita.

The former members of Matto Congrio devided in 1995 in friendship, developing two new formations. Matto Congrio's gaita and flute player Carlos Núñez and the string instrumentalist Pancho Alvarez went on to form the Carlos Núñez Banda, becoming the biggest musical success that Galicia has ever seen, and paving the way for a new young and dynamic scene in Galicia. The other three former Matto Congrios formed what is today possibly Galicia's finest live band: Berrogüetto. The three - accordionist Santiago Cribeiro, soprane saxophonist/fiddler/gaiteiro Anxo Pintos and percussionist Isaac Palacín - were joined by other musicians of famed Galician groups such as Dhais, Armeguin, Fía Na Roca, Fol de Niu: these were Quim Farinha (violin), Guillermo Fernández (guitars) and Quico Comesaña (bouzouki, Celtic Harp). Once formed, things went off quickly - in 1996 the first, and very brilliant, CD called "Navicularia" was recorded with the Galician Do Fol record company. The next three years saw Berrogüetto playing in Galicia, in Spain, Portugal, three tours of Germany, Switzerland and Austria. With the recording of their second album, "Viaxe por Urticaria", they were joined by their seventh regular and first female member: Guadi Galego adds since then not only a new beauty spot, but also a great singing voice and skills on the tamboruine and even on the Gaita.

Guillermo explains the background of the band name:
"Berro is a Galician word meaning scream or shout, and güetto is ghetto. So Berrogüetto is the scream of the Ghetto. In Galicia this kind of music was only second, it was not as important as rock music. So this is a scream for Galician music."
So it was only five years ago that the Galician scene needed such a scream - and this scream was highly successful, wasn't it? "Yes, more than we thought it would be doing, yes. Now things are changing in Galician music. For the first time the audience goes to concerts to see Galician bands and reacts in the same way as they would do with foreign rock bands."

These days, Galician music and Galician bands are very often the stars of folk festivals and the club circuit not only in Spain, but all over Europe. What do Berrogüetto think is the mystery behind Galician music that it is so attractive also to international audiences? - "No, no mystery! This process is involved in a whole process all over the world I think. The audiences seek for new - not for new music but new ways of making music. People seek that you come back to your roots. And I think it is for the first time that Galician music is placed in this whole process as a roots music. No, no mystery, that's important."

The aim of Berrogüetto is to carry the old traditional music of Galicia into our times, and the musicians show themselves very open in bringing new elements into the music. "We have no problems when we use traditional instruments with modern rhythms and with instruments like the keyboards or bass. And to use the different influences of our tradition." As diverse as their influences are the backgrounds of the band members, coming from traditional music, rock music, jazz music. And they try to use those different influences in their music.

On the traditional side of influences, the Celtic element is strong, yet it is only one out of many influences. "The influence from other cultures is very important in our music history, because the pilgrim's way of Santiago was a very popular way in Europe. So we have in our tradition typical rhythms from the Northeast of Spain, we have waltzes, polkas, even some Latin things from South America, like tango, that has come back with the Galician emigrants coming home. It's all natural cultural influence."

Berrogüetto use an exciting range of traditional Galician instruments. Of course there is the national instrument of Galicia, the Gaita. Then there is also a hurdy gurdy - "hurdy gurdies can be found in traditions all over the world, also in Galicia." Also the tambourine is very traditional. Fiddle was traditional in Galicia, but it was lost many years ago, "because people connected it only to the blind, to the traditional songs from blinds. There is only one recording conserved; of Florencio". (FolkWorld had a report about Florencio's music some issues ago.) These old instruments are joined with modern ones, like guitar or bouzouki or most of the percussion.

The material they play is partly traditional, partly own material. While on Berrogüetto's debut CD, more than half of the numbers were traditional, the new CD features only two traditional songs, the rest being own compositions. "We try to preserve the tradtional music, the rhythm", explains Guillermo. "But we have no problems if we have to change anything; yet our tunes are based on traditional rhythms

With this eclectic mix, along with an impressive, yet natural live performance, they catch an always bigger and always more mixed audience. "It is something that surprised us: Because you can see very young people, but also older ones. We think we play music that everyone can understand. It sometimes depends on the place were you play the concert. In a theatre you can find older people, but maybe in open space later in the night when you are drunk..."

The title of last album of Berrogüetto has its background in the utopia of Etienne Cabet, writing in 1840 a book about an utopian village Icaria. Looking from this day's point of view, these descriptions sound not utopian at all: A town with drainage, bathrooms in the houses, retirement at 65, eight working hours a day.... Yet it took 160 years until this utopia became true.

Maybe this utopia gives a link back to the last 5 years, as in these five years an utopia was fulfilled: The utopia of folk music becoming the number one in Galicia. The ghetto from where 7 musicians screamed five years ago has become by now the majority's interest. You just have to believe in your utopias, then they might work, won't they...