Anje Dudalde, Pier Paul Berzaitz, Niko Etxart, Maddi Oihenart, Jojo Bordagarai, Maialen Errotabehere… Singers from three generations of Lapurdi, Zuberoa and Baja Navarra. Model or sample of the 40 years of singing of Ipar Euskal Herria. There are many singers, many songwriters. For example: Marie-Agnès Gorostiague eta Jone Barneix, announcer of Irulegi Irratia and promoter of the Basque Championship Kantu Txapelketa. We've approached all of them, and we've been talking for a long time about the song. Here's a picture of the slogans, melodies and free images that we've been offered at the tertulia.

Running by Zuberoa

“My father had no voice. The mother did. The mother had come from Altzürükü to Muskildi. They were all singers in the family, too now. One of the mother's grandparents came from Ireland with a diatonic accordion. The mother says that her father also played, they were twelve children...”. These are words of Pier Paul Berzaitz. “In the hermitage of San Antonio de Muskildi they used to be hairs, the rulers were meek at the time of singing. They came from Larzabale, Saint Jean de Pied o Hazparne, not enough for zuberotarras to be imposed.”

The voice of Maddi Oihenart is as follows: “In our house we have heard Dad and Mom sing, before it was created the song is already felt. But from the radio of the house you heard songs in French. There was no more at Barkoxe. France Inter, Montecarlo... Brassens, Brel, Bárbara... Also Anglo-Saxon songs, but easily less.”

Niko Etxart came to Paris at two or three years. I came on vacation to Zuberoa: “When we reached the last times of solitude – brother Jean and cousins – Etxahun Iruri, Kopen and Garat Arhan were the last flutists. Pette Etxekopar and Jean Mixel Bedaxagar say we played the flute and sang without complexes.” The young Etxartarras were the new promoters of the Basque song.

The French was introduced into the kitchens through the radios. In the mountains there was only the last song of the Belatxa: “It’s a melody that represents the flight of the Belatxa bird, it has no words. The belatxa, flying from the sky, conveys the observation of the lower part. Gilen Epher used to act in Altzürükün. It's a pretty metaphor. Belatxa is a person looking at chickens or chickens,” Berzaitz tells us.

According to Etxart and Oihenart, today the musicians Etxekopar, Bedaxagar and Axiari sing in their way Belatxa: “It’s a miracle. Also the miracle, in general, the effort that has been made to bring the songs from the past to the present. So there were many singers, the voices were arrogant, beautiful, strong ... Through the song, they worked on the relationship to live and live together, and that's what's changing today."

In the past – both say – the person was involved in the environment and the environment was the person who welcomed it. That's what the person has created, because the person is created with the environment. The first people sang openly in the plaza, day after day, on the microphone. The song doesn't work the same way. That's what changed the song.

From him in Zuberoa – in the mountains – he sings higher than in Lapurdi. Tradition also influences. On the coast prevails the latest fashion, in Zuberoa – also in Biarno and Baxenabar – the song has a mystical sense, rarefied by the environment, linked to the earth. As with dance, not everyone dances zuberotarra. Zuberoa has retained this mystical dimension: “My father [Dominika Etxarte] is not dedicated to controlling the voice, he sang always loud, and you have a lot of things,” says Etxarte.

Michel Labeguerie and South

Berzaitz passed the schooling of Muskildi uros. As a young man, he went to Maule. The beginning was difficult. “I was a little stranded, it’s a feeling, my perception ... Maybe it wasn't like that." Young people from Muskildi, Atharratze and Larrain knew the atmosphere of the bourgeoisie of Maule: “Both face and in fact, we were different, the bourgeoisie of Maule was very afrancessed. They mocked us with our way of speaking. But today I feel like a kind of personal triumph. Our music is ‘bought’, it is a recognition, because then it was a great frustration.”

A Hazpandar Txistulari lit the way to Berzaitz. He looked like some songs from the house, he looked at The Beatles. He spoke in Basque and made music and songs in Basque: “The spirit opened to me. He told me that frustration was one of the greatest pains we have experienced in the Basques, which I had to listen to. He said that the Basques had three options: take the guns, go to Paris – making us French – or the third, learn and fight. Fight in the field, in the company, in the cultural sphere... It opened my conscience.” There he met Beñat Sarasola and Joanes Borda, who also had the same frustration. They were expelled from the Priesthood for wanting to celebrate Mass in Basque. “Beñat took me to the festivities of Urdiñarbe: Mikel Laboa, Lourdes Iriondo, Jose Angel Irigarai... I heard it singing.”

He went to Mondragon for the first time when he was 18 years old. The performance was appalling. I was touched and moved. He also goes to Villabona and is afraid. Her parents told her it wasn't. It was the 1970 edition. “The young people were speaking in Euskera, I never thought it was that way. That's my way, my world, I thought."

“Our family was not Abertzale, we spoke Basque at home, but not for ideological reasons. I met nationalism for 16 years, in the Basque Country Etxea, thanks to the refugees from Hegoalde. It was a big leap. I had the influence of the Soroak group. In Soroak I found songs more beautiful than those of Michel Labeguerie,” says Etxarte. “Imagine, I met Labeguerie – Oihenart continues – much later, and Soroa as well; the Robles family. Iker and Ugutz sang before Labeguerie.”

Ugutz Robles says the Soroak group gave a concert saying that Itsasu and Labeguerie “that’s the form of song I want to make.” “The Prefect, Labeguerie was then a great politician and a great cultural agent, and became the wax of the song.”

So, Etxart, 17, started in the rock world, and she was successful in a 80,000 people's neighborhood in Paris, and she proudly says to us: “It’s true, I was well known, my father didn’t love my way of walking. I was a cartier of artists, the parents of my school friends were luthiers, painters or actors. They gave me a grace of singing French, every Friday we clicked in champagne [laughter]. However, in Altzürükün I took the tradition of the Basque song that I defend today. We returned to Zuberoa at 21 years old.”

She says: “I, on the other hand, sang very little, I landed late. We met in the Atharratze Inn, we went to the dances, we went to the sounds. We started singing and spent the night without seeing anyone. I spent two years, and then I stayed at home, working at home, and I spent fifteen years without singing.” According to Oihenart, a new song will be created. But every country or region has its own personality and is losing the identity of the song. “Of course, people will always sing one way or another, but the influence of external cultures is getting faster and more intense. How do we retain Zuberoa’s identity?”

Above the Bajenares

He is from Gabadia (Baxenabarre) Jojo Bordagarai, although his father was from Pagola (Zuberoa): Alexandre. He was a carpenter, a blacksmith. At home they would always sing, in the salons, in the weddings... He debuted publicly with his sister Bernadette at the age of 10. He liked Niko Etxart, Benito Lertxundi, Peio and Pantxoa... “I didn’t know Labeguerie, but his song that spoke to Txorie has made me think a lot ever since. The singer was sitting on a tree with a sweet head. Labeguerie modernized the Basque song, singing with the guitar was a revolution; it was the time of Franco. I also went south, but on scholarship. From time to time I sang in a song in favor of an ETA member. The Civil Guard came. I quickly clung to our culture.”

Bordagarai knew the black era. “I realized that Euskal Herria suffered a serious cultural oppression: from the point of view of language, of the land... I suffered from the terrible theft that the two states have done to us. I got angry and lived cruelly, frustrated... I went ahead thanks to the Basque and the song: Euskera and nothing else. Later, when working on the texts in Basque, I also analyzed the texts of the French singers, and it was a revelation. I realized that the texts of Brassens, Brel, Ferrat or Renaud are enormous. That has taught me that all cultures are worth living, that they can live together, but without crushing each other.” She is an Euskera teacher and uses the song to teach her. The students are not able to speak much, but it is the advantage of the song, like the theater, that they can learn with desire, enjoying first in the mouth. In his opinion, the mind is exercised through the repetition of words: “People used to sing more in the inns. As the use of the language has fallen, singing has been reduced. But the song won't die, it's remodeling. Baiona and Garazi Kantuz have witnessed the initiative. Every bird has the power to sing in its own way. Rockers, folk singers and rap singers and choirs have their place, but we all have a place. The key is to act enthusiastically, no style can be imposed on anyone. Other generations have arrived and are interested in other styles, but if you feel the song, the rhythm of the song, if it is in Basque, will be the Basque song. Last year, Peio Hospital told me that 80 Basque albums of all styles and trends emerged at the Durango Fair.”

Beyond Navarre to Lapurdi

According to Anje Duhalde, Labeguerie was an important step, but the singers have had at home the basics of the song, in the village: “I grew up surrounded by songs, my father and my uncles loved singing, it wasn’t singing without singing. Labeguerie and my father were friends who had gone to school together. It's said he invented a style, but I don't think so. Brassens, Brel or Leo Ferre, among others, influenced the style of our song.”

Lete, Laboa, Lertxundi... It was the time of the Ez dok amairu when the Maialen Errotabehere feat emerged: “I was born when they sang. I've heard these singers from a young age, but I didn't know that environment. For me they were contemporary songs, that is, a normal environment. I have received another style from Angel’s songs, but the Basque style was already ‘consolidated’. I've known the song in the Ezpela group, in a choir. Although we had the habit of singing at home, we didn’t spend the day without singing.”

It was the year 1970. In Baiona, large demonstrations were held in protest against the case of Burgos, which he described as serious. “They were many fugitives, they had another culture of living, and that meant a change of consciousness between us. By then I was already Euskaldun, but I wasn’t so deeply embedded within myself, I gained political awareness especially at that time,” Duhalde tells us.

They were lucky enough to meet Daniel Landart. Landart took care of him and Mixel Ducau: “Those of my generation began to become aware of the word Euskadi, and then there was no contradiction between the Basque Country and the Basque Country.” Once in Donibane Garazi's Vauban film, after Etxamendi and Larralde, they went up on stage. They brought drums, guitar and bass: “It was terrible, but we had to take the step, Manex Pagola accompanied us. In the third song, the 40-year-olds left the room. ‘That’s not our music,’ they said. Of course, the young man remained.”

Two years later, Errobi's success was enormous. “Words condition the style of music, or in our case it was. My concept of music does not include just beautiful music and words. The two go at once, or else there is no song.” In the opinion of the interlocutors, our song could live without the Basque, but not the creation of the song. “That is in doubt and at risk.” They do not accept the Basque song without the Basque, they say it is a fundamental contradiction, but we live in a contradictory world. Therefore, singers must do their best to keep the Basque alive. These are the words of Errotabehere: “I would like to go further to the South to sing, but our generation is not doing as Angel’s, it has not tied up with the younger ones. We don't go if we don't go with those of the previous generation. Younger people have difficulty going to the South.”

The 1970s was terrible in many ways, both in Europe and in the Basque Country. It was the post-dictatorship era, armed struggle and violent repression. The Duhalde era was a mythical one, in the Basque Country many things happened, socially and politically. It was a time that marked a style: “In society there was another sensibility when I started singing. In Hegoalde there were sometimes two hours ahead because they feared the arrival of the civil guards. Evidently, this changes the attitude of the public.” Errotabehere has taken the floor: “On the one hand, and on the other, we were born with radio, television and the Internet. The influence of those of the house is smaller, we have directly influenced from the outside, faster than you, we have had the influence of many styles. We live in the enormous impact of globalization and cultural disorder. In Angel's time, new things were done, but what is being done now? Now you don’t think so much, some things, but few.” The Errobi group, for example, made records and cassettes for a limited audience: “Today everything comes to the gallop, even then yes, but we do not live the influence of the current media layer. The influence of the media at the time was not as great as today’s,” both say.

Radio Broadcasters in Garazi

The announcers of Irulegi Irratia – Gorostiague and Barneix – pointed the way, and, after all, we have a very short space left for their words. All the contertulios have praised the work of the Basque broadcasters of the last 30 years, as well as the importance of the Basque Championship Kantu Txapelketa. The two journalists recalled Joseba Elosegi, Etxamendi and Larralde, Gu Gira Euzkadi, Michel Labeguerie, and Xalbador hil de Xabier Lete, among others, their songs. They have also highlighted the success of Imanol Kantuz. And, above all, that of Erramun Martiko. Because the last record of our land gives us time. “From our land the title says everything. That's from Euskal Herria, humbly attached to the earth. They are popular songs, sing our verses, stories of agriculture of yesteryear and of the Basques who have walked here and there... from their corner.”