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or me it’s Aladdin’s cave. I ask about a split-bamboo per- cussion instrument. “Ah, it’s one of the cañas that they used to play here, a tarabela.” He demonstrates, not only the clicking but by humming down the end of it to make a kazoo-like buzz. He passes it to me and shows me how. “If you like it I’ll give you one!” I do, and he does.
F There’s a beautifully put-together website, an interactive version
of Pablo’s book Os Instrumentos Musicais Na Tradición Galega, at
www.consellodacultura.gal/asg/instrumentos .
The main traditional music programme on Galician TV, as men-
tioned earlier, is Alalá. It began in 2006, and the producer through- out has been Senén Bernárdez. “We had a double vision, to reach both the young and the old. The programme has themes. We record older people, but also those who go to those older people – ethno - musicologists and others. We record people who make folk music, that’s to say people who combine it with influences from jazz and pop or whatever, and we also record young people who have a more purist approach. What we’re looking for is a picture that’s sociologi- cal, and with the values of those who participate. Retired people, people in the villages, who remember the dances of when they were young, or people in the cities who work in a supermarket, or as an architect, or doctor, who get together, for example in the streets of Santiago playing the gaita.”
“The plan was also to make a TV programme outside of niches. Not to make a folk music programme, for people who like folk music, but to make a programme of traditional music, música de raiz, to gather supporters; people who would be interested in this programme, regardless of whether they would buy records of this music. Often in recording music in the villages, just parts of songs or tunes have been recorded. And if the source musicians have died, their music, their complete pieces, hasn’t been recorded. But what we film is complete pieces. If we only use a minute and a half in the programme, we put the whole piece online. And so if, someone, even ten years later, wants to learn the whole piece, there it is.”
“We also do monographs of a song – we recount its story. If it
has a composer, we talk to them, and the lyricist; if it’s traditional, we talk about the history, and of the musician. We listen to opinions, we go for example to the place where it was collected long ago. We film interpretations of it by, for example jazz musicians, or a classical quartet. We make some programmes that are more anthropological – for example about a carnival, and as well as filming it we talk about its significance, its meaning, and its connections not just in Galicia, but in Iberia and across Europe.”
The programme has also been to Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, to look at the music of Galician migrants. Find all the pro- grammes, and the full-length pieces, at
http://alala.crtvg.es
And of course Alalá covers dance, not in a tourist-postcard sort of way but on location where the people normally dance.
M
ercedes Peón’s brother Quique is a leading and charismatic figure on today’s scene, and the man to talk to about dance. Singer and pandeiretero in the very fine band Radio Cos, collector of a great deal of folk music and dance in the towns and vil- lages with Mercedes since the 1980s, he is a leading dancer-chore- ographer both solo and with his own dance company.
“Here it’s not possible to separate the music and the dance. For me however good a musician or singer is, if it doesn’t make me raise my feet from the floor it doesn’t work for me.”
He uses traditional dance in a theatrical way, not as a colourful folkloric spectacle but to tell a story or express a profound idea.
I went up to A Coruña to see part of a rehearsal of his latest
show, which is about power, drawing on the 15th Century history of the revolution of the Galician Irmandiños against the nobles, in which they destroyed over 70 percent of the castles in Galicia before being defeated.
I mention to Quique that I’m meeting gaiteiro, soprano saxist and general reeds-playing multi-instrumentalist Pedro Lamas, who plays with him, Xurxo Fernandes and others in Radio Cos, and collab- orates in his dance productions.
“Ah! In this revolution he’s the ultimate musician for arranging. He has this jazz orchestra, playing jazz but with traditional music from here, and it sounds very good. He’s young, with a very promis- ing future. If I say ‘Look Pedro, in this act, what happens on stage has this emotion’, he finds the emotion. He’s a marvellous artist, a great player, and very entertaining.”
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