Being a folk musician is no joke

Joseba Tapia (and by association, his human metronome, Leturia, a musician with enormous musical sustenance) no longer requires any eulogies to highlight his irreplaceable contribution to the contemporary triki scene. These two figures have roots that run deep and a vast reservoir of traditional experience on which to draw, but also belong to a generation that listened to rock, and the Tapia eta Leturia Band is the result of this. ‘When I heard the word ballad, I immediately thought of the Scorpions’ Tapia once told me.
Many years ago now, Tapia’s path crossed with that of Ruper Ordorika, or perhaps it was the other way round. In any case, both ended up with Bixente Martínez in ‘Hiru Truku’, bringing out two important albums of traditional Vizcayan songs which gained international acclaim thanks to the legendary Martin Carthy, who not only recorded and performed with them, but also borrowed the melody of ‘Bakarrik aurkitzen naiz’ in order to meditate on love and death in ‘The wife of Usher’s well’. Thus a new way of singing folk songs was born in the Basque Country, and Tapia, who always makes jokes about this, developed it further in his joint projects with Koldo Izagirre, which had the literary and ideological weight of works such as ‘Apoaren edertasuna’ (which saw them perform together on stage) and ‘Agur Intxorta maite’. In between came ‘Hamalau kantu independentziarako’, perhaps the most folk-oriented of them all, which also featured Arkaitz Miner and his violin, in the Quebec songs. Tapia and Leturia studio recordings such as ‘Bizkaiko kopla zaharrak’, a project developed in collaboration with Amuriza, were a foreshadow of the format that Tapia was searching for. The piano was the missing piece of the puzzle and Jesus Aranburu, a young, former accordionist, gives the tracks a rhythmic touch in addition to a few mad jazz and blues phrases, which make for some beautiful moments in the live album.

Over the last two years, Tapia and Leturia have worked live with this quartet formation: accordion, percussion, piano and violin or mandolin (alternately). Live concert albums are usually a fallback for dry periods, the end of a cycle or a too-obvious review of past successes. Everything that ‘Hain zuzen’ is not. Twelve songs recorded live in the Navarra town of Azkarate, next to the Katarain studios from which cables were run to a couple of farmhouses further down the hill by the technical team used previously by Ruper Ordorika. All this to ensure an album that is a true source of folk pleasure and a definitive step forward in the journey which began so many years ago with Hiru Truku. The album was recorded among friends on the sixth of September last year, although a run through was held the day before without an audience, in order to avoid last-minute surprises. Before the concert, the four musicians and the production team shared a freshly cooked dish of potato and tuna stew, a fair few drinks and the marvellous Betelu junket for pudding with a hundred or so guests, who could later be heard clapping and helping create a party-like atmosphere.

The concert began with a number of warm ups, before starting on the twelve tracks that were to make up ‘Hain zuzen’. The first four tracks (three songs and one instrumental piece) were new. The first ones, with Koldo Izagirre: ‘Wafa’, about the first female Palestinian human bomb and ‘Aritmetika arazoak’ , in which Ruper sings the chorus are, like ‘Compostelako erromesa’, a sly tribute to Galiza with lyrics by Tapia, wonderful, catchy pieces. In the Compostela song, for example, a traditional Castilian melody is transformed into a violin piece which reminds us of the classic Cajun track ‘J´ai vu le loup, le renard et la belette’. A way of interpreting the music that also forms a connection with northern Basque territories. ‘Ainhoarrak’ is an instrumental piece and both Patxi Pérez and the Catalonian musicians Eduardo Casals (clarinet) and Cathy Peña (accordion) collaborate in it. Next come the two hits ‘Apoarena’ and ‘Quebec’, followed by ‘Arraun’ and the incomparable ‘Porrusalda de Loiola’. From the duo’s old repertoire we have ‘Besamotza’, ‘Abya Yala’ and the traditional songs ‘Astotxo bat baneuko’, ‘Trikitiaren sua’ (which now has new lyrics) and ‘Zeruko auspoa’.
The recording finishes with ‘Gezurtientzat’, a song of 36 by Jose Maria Lopetegi, who also features live. After this final track, the quartet continued playing for a further half an hour, and after a short break, they returned with Patxi Pérez as master of ceremonies and the party raged until the small hours of the morning.
‘Hain zuzen’ contains an overview of both the duo and Tapia’s solo work, as well as four new tracks of tremendous melodic-vocal and rhythmic intensity and strong thematic base. They are, in short, songs which sum up the past, but also forge new paths into the future with brilliance, humour, tragedy and tributes to external influences, in addition to a sound guaranteed to get your feet tapping, especially if you happen to be in a good company with people willing to sing along.
PEI