----- Original Message -----
From: "Wright, Roger" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "study of popular / folk / traditional ballads" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 10:27 AM
Subject: Improvised Iberian Folk Music
I was once on a coach with about 40 Spanish history students, travelling on
a cold wet morning from Marbella to Granada. We stopped to get several
bottles of cognac and a newspaper, and the students then amused themselves
by improvising brief inventive ballad-metre pieces on the headlines in the
paper (to basic and well-known tunes); it was fascinating and a privilege to
watch and listen.
The living Basque tradition is studied in detail in: Samuel G. Armistead and
Joseba Zulaika, eds, "Voicing the Moment: inprovised oral poetry and Basque
tradition", University of Reno [Nevada], Center for Basque Studies
(Conference Papers series, no.3), 2005, 430 pp., ISBN 1-877802-55-7, with
several photograpohs of performers. Wonderful. (Margaret Sleeman's review is
in press with the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, and will be published later
this year) - RW
-----Original Message-----
From: study of popular / folk / traditional ballads
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Simon Furey
Sent: 14 September 2007 20:43
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Maltese Folk Music
You will still find improvised songs today (including the competitive
element) in the Iberian peninsula.
I attended a competitive song festival in northern Catalonia at the
beginning of this year, and was impressed by the singers, who were amusing
as well as skilful. There are various standard song forms that each pair of
competitors have to conform to, and the judges give them a theme to start
with. They then sing alternate improvised verses trying to trip each other
up. Eventually one singer can't invent a new verse quickly enough in reply
and so loses.
A similar tradition is also very common in Valencia, where somebody whispers
themes and topics into the ear of the singer, who has to sing about this
immediately following the verse he or she is currently singing. This is
unbelievably hard (you try it!) to finish singing one verse you just
invented while receiving information for and inventing the next verse.
The music in both the Catalan and Valencian traditions tends to follow a
standard form, rather than an improvised one, although (particularly in the
Valencian case) the proximity of Arab/Moorish music is clear.
Someone once told me something like this still happens in Euskadi (the
Basque country) also, but alas I have no information on it.
Cheers
Simon Furey
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