If you haven’t ever heard the txalaparta, you are missing out.\u00a0 Originally an instrument of communication, the txalaparta has become a central part of modern Basque folk music.<\/p>\n
The txalaparta<\/a> is a set of planks, often about 5, that two people play together.\u00a0 As such, it is billed as the only instrument in the world that is meant to be played simultaneously by two people.\u00a0 Originally, it was only one plank and was used to communicate between valleys.\u00a0 Rhythms were beat out that alerted neighboring valleys of weddings, deaths, and that the batch of sagardoa — hard cider — was ready.\u00a0 However, by the mid-1900s, it was nearly lost, with only a few rural folk playing the instrument.\u00a0 It was then that it was rediscovered by Basque folk musicians, who embraced it and made it a central part of Basque folk music.<\/p>\n Oreka TX<\/a> is one of the leading groups promoting the txalaparta, pushing it as a musical instrument both in form and style (as they noted, the TX is for txalaparta, not Texas!).\u00a0 The group — Harkaitz Martinez de San Vicente, Mikel Ugarte, I\u00f1igo Eguia, Mixel Ducau, and Ander Sierra — came to New Mexico to perform at Globalquerque! in September and made a stop in Santa Fe to play for New Mexico Euskal Etxea.\u00a0 And both performances were wonderful experiences.<\/p>\n Their current performance centers around their video, Nomadak TX, in which they traveled the world to encounter other cultures, using the txalaparta as a bridge to those cultures.\u00a0 They highlight four destinations — Finland, Mongolia, Egypt, and India — and in each they make a txalaparta from local materials.\u00a0 This is particularly interesting in Finland as they make one out of ice.\u00a0 In each case, they interact with local musicians who have their own local instruments and essentially jam.\u00a0 The txalaparta is more than an instrument, it is a connector to those cultures.<\/p>\n The performance at Globalquerque! involved showing clips from the video with the local musicians essentially prerecorded and the txalaparta duo — Harkaitz and Mikel — performing live on top.\u00a0 Mixel played the alboka — another traditional Basque instrument — and other wind instruments such as the clarinet.\u00a0 I\u00f1igo accompanied on drums.\u00a0 It was an awesome show, with the mallets used by Harkaitz and Mikel flying through the air.\u00a0 They used txalapartas of both wood and metal for different pieces and really got what was a full crowd going.\u00a0 I’m biased, of course, attracted to all things Basque, but I really think the txalaparta is one of the most visually dynamic instruments I’ve seen.\u00a0 And it is amazing in its simplicity, what these guys can make these wooden planks do.<\/p>\n In Santa Fe, things were a little lower key, with the group performing a few pieces and then us showing the video of Nomadak TX.\u00a0 They ended with a little bit of hands-on with the txalaparta for those in attendance.<\/p>\n That evening, we took the group to a local Santa Fe establishment, the Cowgirl, with its Old West feel, and had a very nice chat about the txalaparta, Basque folkmusic, and their travels.\u00a0 One thing I hadn’t realized was that the txalaparta is specifically an instrument of Gipuzkoa.\u00a0 In other parts of the Basque Country, they didn’t seem to have txalapartas exactly.\u00a0 In Nafarroa, they played an instrument called the kirikoketa<\/a>, which is related, in that two musicians hit a plank with mallets, but now they stand over the plank and the mallets are body-length.\u00a0 In Bizkaia, coming out of the long history that province has with iron and steel, they play instead the tobera<\/a>, which is an iron rod that is hit much like a txalaparta, again with two players.<\/p>\n All of the group members were great to talk to, very willing to share their experiences and knowledge, and very down to earth.\u00a0 I guess that make sense, considering their travels.<\/p>\n If you have the chance to see these guys live, it is well worth it.\u00a0 I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you haven’t ever heard the txalaparta, you are missing out.\u00a0 Originally an instrument of communication, the txalaparta has become a central part of modern Basque folk music. The txalaparta is a set of planks, often about 5, that two people play together.\u00a0 As such, it is billed as the only instrument in the world […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,6,19],"tags":[442,443,444,251,445,53],"class_list":["post-488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-folklore","category-music","category-people","tag-folk-music","tag-globalquerque","tag-kirikoketa","tag-oreka-tx","tag-tobera","tag-txalaparta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2sYNu-7S","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buber.net\/Basque\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}