GUADI GALEGO
lúas de outubro e agosto
Fol 1078
Mention "Celtic lands," and chances are good few
will mention Galicia–a northwestern region of Spain that bleeds into northern
Portugal. That is unless you come from there, like Guadi Galego, who has
devoted much of her musical career exploring its tunes and singing in the
Galician language–an Indo-European Romance language that includes Celtic and
Germanic vocabulary. For 18 years Galego played bagpipes and sang with
Berroguito, an important regional Celtic-influenced band. These days, though,
Galego is as apt to champion activist feminism as Celtic culture. For her
second solo album, Galego takes up the cause of Galician mothers, whom she
views as trapped within a capitalist, patriarchal, macho model of maternity. She's
also expanded her musical palette on an album that freely mixes folk melodies,
pop rhythms, jazzy torch singing, and arrangements that skirt the borders of
theatricality–sometimes within the same song.
The album title translates "Moons of October and
August" and pays tribute to the months in which she gave birth to her two
sons. Those boys better grow up to be feminists, as Galego puts that spin on
everything everywhere. "Matriarchas" was written as homage to the
three Mirabal sisters murdered in 1960 for their opposition to Dominican
dictator Rafael Trujillo. (Dominicans often view this as a key moment in the
slow transition to democracy. Trujillo was assassinated in 1961, just five
months later.) It's one of
Galego's hybridized tunes, one that begins quietly and mournfully, but she uses
the considerable power of her voice to build it, add instruments and voices to
the mix, and increase the drama. The album's opening track,
"Merguillei," is similar in feel—quiet, then big. Is it folk? Pop?
More the latter, I think, and that too is intentional. Galego has particular
affinity for working women–the ones often pressured to find an impossible
balance between work, parenthood, and an outside life that she insists includes
the disco. Her drum-looped "Chea de Vida" and "Aromas de
Terra" are so much in the pop vein that were they in English you might
think them lifted from Robyn's dance club repertoire. But then what does one
make of gentle songs such as "Pernoctei" or "O Muro," the
first what you might get if you crossed smoky jazz with a flamenco singing; and
the latter soulful and subdued? The last song translates "O Wall,"
and that's perhaps the best way to think of this album. Ms. Galego is no
respecter of boundaries, including those dictated by men, commerce, or musical
genres.
Rob Weir
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