The Beauty of The Toad

While world of “ethnic” music has become commercially viable, offering nice and pleasant cosmopolitan versions of popular themes in the guise of “a melting pot” culture and also “new age” music is cheaply available on radio or in the supermarket, two Basque artists, Koldo Izagirre and Joseba Tapia, have come together to work on a popular and universal theme, looking for a “mix” that is both more profound and more daring than that on offer from the sound laboratory or the multinational: bringing together poetry and music to attain the finest creative expressivity with the minimum of means. APOAREN EDERTASUNA (The Beauty of The Toad) is the result of this no mean task.

The toad in our culture is synonymous with ugliness, ungainliness and moral torpitude. Its stare denotes lack of feelings, witches use its viscous excretion to make their unguents and even the devil himself often takes on its bodily guise. It is the most important animal inhabitant both of witches’ covens and the devil’s den. It is on this myth that THE BEAUTY OF THE TOAD is based. Its beauty is in the fact that the ugly and clumsy toad –the nightingale of the mire– gaces up to the arrogance of the “beautiful people” and to the scorn of the vain with a pride in his tireless song, thus producing a metaphor, both individual and collective, for that rebellion troughout history of the condemned.

In the same way that the prince turns into a toad under the spell of the witches brew, Joseba Tapia has been named prince of the toads. A logical and fully deserved choice, if we consider that the diatonic accordion has often been referred to as the “devil’s bellows” and Joseba is the most accomplished exponent. He has responded to the task with a playfuk, rebellious and innovative work.

Koldo Izagirre worked on Joseba Tapia’s suggestions of various themes and forms, alterning refined meters with popular rythms and verses but without ever losing sight of a common, unifying thread. Thus, THE BEAUTY OF THE TOAD brings together the Basque dance tune, the porrusalda or the pasodoble, with a ballad or a lullaby, but all the tracks form part of a greater whole: the subjectivity of the toad, its fixed stare, its pained cry, its utopia full of hope. In this musician –here a singer-songwriter– the writer has found the ideal artist capable of transmitting to the public the irony and the subtlety of his verse.

In Joseba Tapia’s hands, the Basque accordion and its music (trikitixa) proves, if proof was needed, that it is at home with a quality of message, with an elegance in expressiveness, with poetry. This is important because it raises this humble instrument to the noblest level from yesterday’s mire where it was disdained as sinful and foreign and, thus today, is in danger of being relegated to a mere folksy and vulgar role.