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It can be a game, a friendly duel. It's a dialogue, where it's just as important to listen modestly as to make a bold statement. It can be made of wood, ice, stone.
The answer to this riddle: a Basque percussion instrument, the txalaparta, wooden planks laid over trestles and struck with sticks held vertically. It resonates in the hands of Oreka Tx, an ensemble whose album, Nömadak Tx(on World Village), finds them exploring new voices and connections for this ancient and once endangered instrument. American audiences in cities like Minneapolis, San Francisco, Washington and Chicago will get a unique chance to experience these worldly experimenters in September 2010.
“It's a very different understanding if you're used to playing your own instrument and mixing it with the band," explains Harkaitz Martinez de san Vincente, who along with Igor Otxoa founded Oreka Tx. “You have to share the txalaparta with another person. It's the sharing of the rhythm that's difficult, and that's the challenge."
Oreka Tx—Martinez and fellow txalapartari Mikel Ugarte, joined by several other musicians fluent in Basque and global sounds—have taken their instrument, which they make themselves, from precious folk symbol to cosmopolitan high art. The sound recalls the marimba, but only in the way a piano resembles a pipe organ. Its satisfying union of rhythmic and melodic colors can be exploited in full, thanks to a duo of performers who are constantly engaged in improvisatory give-and-takes and passionate interwoven conversations, establishing and breaking down each other's beats.
Straddling France and Spain, the Basque people have strong ties to the land and their language—though no links linguistically to the surrounding peoples—and a past that extends back to the beginnings of human settlement in Europe. The origins of the txalaparta (pronounced CHOLL-uh-PART-uh) are shrouded in the same sort of mystery as the Basques themselves: Its sound has been connected to everything from galloping horses and successful cider pressings to hill-to-hill communication.
Yet more recently, it was firmly linked to Basque identity, as a distinctive, unmistakable, very audible instrument banned along with the language under Franco. Condemned to silence, the txalaparta nearly died out, leaving a mere four players (two sets of brothers) by the 1960s. Thanks to a cultural revival movement, however, the instrument gained a new lease on life, and by the 1990s, was being taught regularly to interested students.
The txalaparta's near brush with extinction means musicians can do almost anything, and be doing something radical. “It's a young instrument, and anything you do is new," Martinez muses. “You feel very close to the development, and by building it yourself, you also get very close to the instrument."
For Martinez and Otxoa, this closeness combined with a love of travel led to their recent exploration of nomadic culture and txalaparta potential, Nömadak Tx, a project that included a recording, documentary film, and now live multimedia performances. Listeners get a glimpse of Oreka Tx's epic journey to the Sahara, the Arctic, the Subcontinent, and the steppes via images and sounds interwoven with live musical performance.
The musicians of Oreka Tx went in search not only of nomads, but of people who share some of the Basques' difficult fate as minorities without a recognized nation-state. They played with a throatsinger from the reindeer-herding Tsaan of Northwestern Mongolia, related to the Tuvans just across the border in Russia. They worked with musicians in refugee camps in Algeria, facing displacement and hardship after Morocco's invasion. They made music with Adivasi musicians in remote, overlooked corners of India.
And wherever they went, they made a txalaparta from local materials that defined the nomads' lives. They carved planks of ice with the Sami of Lapland. They struck stones in the Sahara, to reflect the desert's power.
These innovations not only helped them connect with musicians on their travels, but changed the way they performed on the txalaparta. “It was so nice to be working with different materials like ice," Martinez smiles. “The sound is very different compared to wood. You can't hit it hard, so you have to play softer. We didn't just make new songs on our journeys; we made a new approach to playing."
Regardless of the materials and style, the instrument itself, while a meaningful part of Basque heritage, is also a powerful symbol: Two players must interact respectfully and intently to make any music at all. The dynamics of the instrument point to new ways of relating between cultures.
“It's a nice symbol: Two people have to play same instrument, have to listen and respect other, to do one positive thing. The music doesn't belong to one or the other," Martinez reflects. “It can represent nicely the meeting point of different cultures and people. And it gives us another way to express that we Basques want to exist as part of this plural world, to give another color to the world."
Tour Schedule:
- 09/17/2010, Fri: Bloomington, IN: Lotus World Music & Arts Festival; Show: TBA
- 09/18/2010, Sat: Bloomington, IN: Lotus World Music & Arts Festival; Show: TBA
- 09/19/2010, Sun: Takoma Park, MD: Montgomery College; 7600 Takoma Ave.; PH: 240-567-1300
- 09/22/2010, Wed: Minneapolis, MN: Cedar Cultural Center; 416 Cedar Avenue South;
Tix: $20.00, Doors Open: 7 pm; PH: 612.338.2674
09/23/2010, Thu: San Francisco, CA: Basque Cultural Center; 599 Railroad Avenue; Show: 7:30 pm; PH: 650.583.8091
- 09/24/2010, Fri: Chino, CA: Chino Basque House; 15181 Sierra Bonita; Show: 7:30 pm; PH: +1.909.597.7982
- 09/25/2010, Sat: Albuquerque, NM: Globalquerque; 1701 4th St. SW
- 09/29/2010, Wed: Chicago, IL: Cervantes Institute: Chicago World Music Festival; 31 W. Ohio
09/30/2010, Thu: Chicago, IL: Chicago Cultural Center: Chicago World Music Festival; 78 E. Washington St 08/13/10
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