Mercedes Peón

"I am a woman who expresses freely her energy and the way those Galician women play is formidably strong and tribal."

Mercedes Peón has burst on the international music scene with her debut, Isué, a record of traditional and original Galician music that both reveres the past and also picks it up by the scruff of the neck and carries it into the modern age - not unlike a Spanish version of Värttinä, both in feel and execution. But behind it all is a very and lengthy devotion to Galician musical history, and not so much the piping that has given the region recent prominence, but the vocal tradition that has mostly been ignored....
..."I have gathered more than one thousand two-hour tapes with all kinds of unknown songs, which I recorded while doing field work, and I can assure you that Galicia is a rich land, unique in Europe," Peón explained. "The ease or difficulty in collecting those songs has a lot to do with a very good knowledge of the codes used by those people who have kept their Galician tradition from generation to generation." At the same time, she acknowledged that while her own material might have the spirit of the past, "I cannot say that the tradition continues since I am a composer and arranger. To consider anything as traditional, it has to be the evolutionary expression of the people, from generation to generation. This must not be static. In the 20th century, Galician tradition evolved through social changes without losing their essence, comparable to the North African expressions; in my case, it is the free expression of someone who has plenty of references, one of which is the vocal and percussive tradition, which I use freely to convey all that I want to express."

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1 Ben linda
2 Ingrávida
3 Aiché
4 Carencias
5 A miña
6 Igualiña que os antigos
7 Paralá
8 Intermezzo
9 As ás
10 Ajárrate

Sihá
Ethinc, world, rock, pop or ska,

whatever the genre
Try it it might be fun
just remember
first you must say
thegoodone
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