223: Árnica Pura, by Davide Salvado

Davide Salvado (Spain)
Árnica Pura (2011)
12 tracks, 41 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

In preparing to head over to Santiago de Compostela for my first WOMEX as a member of the production team (rather than just as a delegate), I decided to delve into the music of Galicia, the region of Spain in which Santiago is the capital. Galician culture is rather different from other Spanish cultures, with its language having much more in common with Portuguese and many of its ancient traditions tracing back to the Celts. Of course, the music reflects this: there are no traditions quite like Galician music. The combinations of instruments in Galician folk music is very pleasing (to me, at least, and maybe you if you like somewhat harsh tones), with melodies played on a combination of gaita (bagpipes) and zanfona (hurdy-gurdy) and rhythms backed up by the large square frame drum, the pandeiro, and the pandeireta (tambourine).

But, like most folk music traditions, the jewel of Galician music is its song. And that was what I first found in my Galician music journey. Very specifically, it was this video by singer Davide Salvado*:

I watched that video and I was awe-stuck. My mouth was literally hanging open. Everything about it is so, so beautiful to me. The setting in a woods next to a mossy, ivy-covered rock, the delicate and intimate actions of washing someone’s feet, and the connection with ancient nature-based rituals with the use of flowers. There’s a subversion of the masculine in this act too, which is really lovely, helped by the fact that Davide is so good looking. And, of course, there is the song itself. ‘Meu Meniño’ is from his debut album Árnica Pura, but the rawness of the performance in this short video makes it extra special. Its melody is simply stunning; so gentle and fragile, but with a deep sadness to it too, and the way Davide’s voice flutters around the ornaments and leans into some of the more uncomfortable notes has the effect of tugging on the heart strings. Even in a few short verses, you can hear all sorts of musical connections too, with little bits of Spanish, Celtic and even Arabic working their way into the melody.

After I watched that video the first time, I was stunned for a few seconds, and then I watched it again. And then I had to show everyone. Although most liked the song, no-one seemed as enthusiastic as I’d hoped. My friend Robin even said something to the effect of “Jim, this looks suspiciously like hippy nonsense.” And yeah, he’s right, but come on. Even hippy nonsense can be achingly beautiful sometimes – here’s proof. So, although today’s entry is ostensibly about the album, I’m basically using it as an excuse to show more people the video of Davide’s ‘Meu Meniño’ in the hopes that one of you will be struck by it as much as I was. And if you’re not, at least you have a whole album of top-notch Galician folk song to enjoy either way.


* Mad coincidence: just found out that it’s apparently Davide’s birthday as I write this…on my own birthday! Happy birthday to us!

157: Sacred Riverside Gathering @ Monasterio de Santa Cristina, Galicia, by Davide Salvado, Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė, David Rothenberg and Miguel Hiroshi

Davide Salvado, Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė, David Rothenberg and Miguel Hiroshi (Spain/Lithuania/USA/Japan)
Sacred Riverside Gathering @ Monasterio de Santa Cristina, Galicia (2014)
9 tracks, 53 minutes

This is another Album that is not really an album at all. It was a concert that was live streamed and – wondrous! – has been archived in full on YouTube. You can watch and listen to the entire performance there, together with some interviews and speeches, or, if you prefer, I have also turned all the musical sections into an mp3 album that you can listen to on the go. Get in touch and I’ll send you those files.

This album/video/stream or whatever you want to call it is the record of a unique musical meeting. Organised by the eco music platform Wapapura to coincide with that year’s WOMEX event, the concert was held in the beautiful 12th century Monastery of Santa Cristina along the banks of the River Sil in Galicia, Spain. In the monastery’s cave-like church, four musicians and a very small audience gathered for a one-off collaboration.

Two of the musicians come from traditional backgrounds – there’s Davide Salvado, a Galician folk singer, and Indrė Jurgelevičiūtė, a Lithuanian singer and kanklės (zither) player – and two come from the world of experimental music – David Rothenberg is a jazz clarinettist who is most well-known for his work with naturally-occurring music, most recently performing with nightingales in Berlin, and Miguel Hiroshi is a Japanese-Spanish percussionist who works with rhythms from all over the globe.

Together, the musicians take turns performing pieces from each other’s repertoire and expanding their own traditions to accommodate the particularities of their collaborators’. They take part in collective improvisation in a calm and relaxed manner; although one musician may lead a particular section, none takes a precedent over the others. In the hushed church, every smallest sound is crystal clear and reverberates around the space for a long time, meaning that the barely amplified music often plays with dynamics of quietness as opposed to the dynamics of loudness that we usually expect. In the ancient, holy surrounds, it all gives the concert a meditative, even mystical feeling, and one that is obviously shared by the audience, who click their fingers rather than clap at the end of pieces so as not to break that spell. It’s the perfect music for the perfect location.

I can only imagine what it must have felt like to experience this concert in the flesh. Although I was nearby at the time, in Santiago de Compostela, I unfortunately couldn’t go – I was working instead. It’s really great that Wapapura not only live streamed the whole event (using only solar power, no less) but continue to host it online for us all to enjoy this magnificent one-time collaborative event.

145: Leyenda, by Ana Alcaide

Ana Alcaide (Spain)
Leyenda (2016)
12 tracks, 56 minutes
Spotify ∙ iTunes

Aren’t good things that you stumble across by accident imbued with that little extra sweetness? That’s one of the reasons I enjoy this album by Ana Alcaide.

I first heard of Ana at WOMEX 18, which was being held in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in October last year. It was the first night of the showcase festival, and the music was spread across five stages in and around the Auditorio Alfredo Kraus. The whole place was a bit like a maze. I was heading over to catch the set from pan-Latin group Ladama on the Theatre Stage, so I found a theatre and ducked in. Wrong stage – this obviously wasn’t Ladama. When I walked in, it was just one woman on her own, sat on the edge of the stage, playing the Swedish nyckelharpa – a sort of fiddle with keys instead of a fingerboard, and loads of sympathetic strings – and singing. It was all very quiet, but the audience didn’t make a sound. It was absolutely captivating.

After that piece, I slipped out and made my way to the Theatre Stage, where I’d wanted to be all along. That gig was okay, but I couldn’t settle to it at all. Ladama’s was dancing-in-the-aisles music, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the other stage. So I wandered back there and the nyckelharpist now had a band, and together they were playing a real mix of styles, of Celtic and Arabic, Scandinavian and Eastern European music, underpinned by Spanish traditions. It was a wonderful performance, and I didn’t regret making that wrong turn one bit. I only found out after the performance that this was Ana Alcaide.

Of course, the record can’t live up to an experience like that – lived experiences always have so much weight, of memories and senses and connections and emotions – but it certainly does stand up on its own. All the songs are inspired by myths and legends that surround women and the feminine from around the world, and the music is a multicultural mix of styles that is in turns calm and uptempo, ethereal and weighty.

One of the best things about festivals is that opportunity to happen upon something new and unexpected; something that you’d never consider otherwise, but which hits you at just the right moment to lodge itself deeply within. It’s even better if that happens when you’re wandering around not quite sure where you are. Ana Alcaide is just one glorious example; who knows who it will be next?

110: Método Cardiofónico, by Germán Díaz

Germán Díaz (Spain)
Método Cardiofónico (2014)
12 tracks, 46 minutes
Spotify • iTunes

There are many theories that relate human beings’ love for music to its resemblance to their own cardiorhythms. Galician musician Germán Díaz took this idea and ran with it. Díaz’ Método Cardiofónico is certainly high-concept, and it’s not the first of its name. In 1933, Dr Miguel Iriarte recorded many examples of both healthy and afflicted heartbeats onto slate discs. The recordings were then translated onto shellac and published as Método Cardifónico, for the use and training of medical students. Díaz the elder was a doctor, and passed a copy of these shellac discs onto his son; as a master of the zanfona (Galician hurdy-gurdy), Díaz the younger knew he had to find a musical use for the recordings.

Each piece on the resulting album is based around a different rhythm from Dr Iriarte’s collection. From those most organic of musical bases, Díaz looked in the opposite direction, bringing in mechanical music in a big way. Across this album are probably many kilometres of hand-punched card, on which Díaz intricately programmed the parts for the mechanical instruments: there’s a music box, a barrel organ and a ‘chromatic rollmonica,’ an interesting little device that is a little like a harmonica version of a player piano. Here’s a great little film on YouTube explaining all the various processes that went into the making of the album:

Over and above this antique musical cyborg, Díaz and his friends create wonderfully sophisticated yet cheerful chamber jazz. Between them, they add the live sounds of zanfona, trumpet, tuba, clarinets standard and bass, oboe and cor anglais – the latter two of which I usually have a healthy hatred of, but here they sound absolutely lovely. The unusual timbres at play give the music a slightly wonky feel (helped by the occasionally limping heartbeats), and the typewriteresque click-clackery of the zanfona and mechanical gadgets make it feel like it was recorded in the workshop of some hair-brained engineer. Some tracks, such as ‘Cirro’ and ‘Lettre Pour Béatrice’, sound so whimsical they could have come straight out of a Studio Ghibli film soundtrack.

A lot of effort went into this album, from composing and arranging the pieces around the cardiophonics, to the painstaking programming of the mechanical instruments’ parts and even their fine-tuning to work with an ensemble, to the perfect balancing of the instruments and the techniques to incorporate in to solos to create and curate a very unique atmosphere. I’m not sure I can name another album that even tries to approach what this one achieves. Well done Germán Díaz. I ❤️ Método Cardiofónico.