- The Live Music Festival of Stateless Peoples will hold its ninth edition on 27 and 28 October in Galdakao. Five groups will be added to the table: Two from the Basque Country and two from Cornwall, Britain and Kosovo. Like every year, the dance group Andra Mari of Galdakao has organized the program. We have talked to his colleague Garatz Unamunzaga, who has worked on the preparation of the last five editions.
Andra Mari dantza taldea organizes the Musika Bizian festival. Why a group of dances?
Although we are a dance group, in Galdakao we make music. In an edition of the Folklore Bizian dance festival that we held this summer, we came up with the idea of creating Live Music, among other things because there are other similar cultures in the world, and because it would be nice to offer something like this to Galdakao. We decided to move away from commercial music and focus on bringing cultures from certain peoples.
And why the stateless peoples?
To show the people the existence of peoples and cultures similar to ours, oppressed and minorities. Beyond knowing us, the festival offers us the opportunity to make known its struggles and demands.
The issue goes beyond getting on the stage...
For foreign groups it can be enriching to make their work known, but above all I think what happens off stage is also interesting. And I find it enriching not just for us. Also for them for their relationship with the Basque Country groups.
On the stage there will also be luthier or creative instruments from different places sharing knowledge.
We want to show the culture from a musical point of view, and we believe that the luthier ones also have something to say there, because in those creations they would be the "primaries". In a terrestrial format, as a fair, we will show the instruments and creators we have in the Basque Country, on the one hand, and the foreign luthier ones and the instruments that make us so "rare" on the other.
Creators will offer a children's workshop.
They will build instruments with recycled materials. We want to extend the project to all ages.
Do you know if it's held somewhere else?
No, we don't know these kinds of international gatherings or festivals. Then, it's true, we've been looking for groups of this kind, the festivals in your country, and we've dedicated ourselves to collecting, because some make some exchanges ... But something like that, no.
Ninth edition. At the hearing they reiterated their firm commitment to the objectives.
The festival was created to share and learn about the cultures of stateless nations. This objective obviously follows and will continue. I do not expect any change.
You will have won the spectacularity in the village, which has become commonplace ...
People know that by the end of October he's in Live Music and knows that from the outside we're going to bring groups, see curious instruments... And people in general are curious to gather people from here and there, to see different flags, to meet people from oppressed peoples ... These are usually beautiful days.
