In 2016, they published Ildoa, Landuz's latest work. It was a milestone in the group’s trajectory, but not to get away from anywhere – the crumbs are also used in this sense – but to get closer, as it was a record that sang to the Region of Pamplona firsthand. Txertaketa, following in the same line, sings from the local: “From there we make music there,” says Ion Celestino, the undisputed leader of the group.

The Brass Band of New Orleans -- we can say the charanges -- created the group from their melodies, groups and models. In the first two albums they have endured more classical jazz, but in the last two they are more loose and mix funk, gospel and hip-hop, with Latin rhythms and heavier groove.

The recording and mixing was performed by the musician Barañain Moses No Sleeps and was released with the label La Naben de Barañain and Sustraian Records of Iruñerriko. The last two projects have emerged around black music, meeting spaces between groups and such usual styles: experimentation and community.

The songs that open and close the album are a jazzero version of Agur jaunak. In the intra, with the help of the drum and bass, we can imagine the parade that heads to the burial. It's known that at the funerals of New Orleans Brass Band is going to play music behind the corpse, and behind, on the second line, family and friends dancing, celebrating their life. The outro, on the contrary, is more solemn, without percussion, to travel to the quiet of internal reflection.

Like Detroit Motown, the legendary Navarro power pop group Balerdi Balerdi interprets Pamplona as Motor City. Celestino made the Motor City joke
“for a long time” and from the song of the Balerdi they shouted “we are! Let’s go!”

Then comes the call for an indefinite strike. This high melody by Broken Sisters – Nerea Erbiti, Terela Gradín and Silvia Pérez – may seem like a Corno child, but Hedoi Etxarte’s words will set the counterpoint to infantilism, working naively on class struggle: “It’s easy, if you’re not older, you’ll understand it.”

Martin & Marcela, a Latin remix DJ, is a small tribute to DJ Budin de Pamplona. The person and whoever represents it. “We also like to make songs that are universal of very local things. In this song, like the DJs, we've taken fragments of songs and mixed throughout the whole song. It’s a kind of game to be able to look for them.”

Not all white people sing flours. On the album they have had more chances of playing with the voices, and that is what can be highlighted in Txertaketa and differentiate it from the direct ones, “because it is more difficult to qualify so much on the street”. They sing in the street through the “chant group” and the antiphony: the crowns of questions and answers.

According to Paul Gilroy in his book Atlantiko Beltza, these sung conversations are one of the great bases of black music, which generate democratic and community moments, and which, through the antiphony, symbolize non-dominant social relations.

Just the stars above us, it's the best example of the answer to the question. The song made by Broken with Hedoi Etxarte for the Youth Meetings held in 2016 in Barañain ended up placing the slogan on the encounters. One of those songs they have undoubtedly created to “give hymns to the city.”

Destroying the chains of ignorance

The fans of the Basque rock caught their attention by making a version of Dut on the album. Post-hardcore and jazz? Yes, and from the beginning. In fact, the song Abolishing the Chains of Ignorance is made from fragments of Jean Pierre's melody by Miles Davis: “At that time I started listening to hip-hop, and I was surprised that I was discovered in Basque. I have the feeling that your first job has been forgotten, but for me it is still very current.”

Celestino contacted the owners when recording the song and asked them where the sample of English used in the motto could be obtained. Answer: no, it wasn't a sample. Apparently, while recording the Dutekoak album, a Jamaican appeared in Hondarribia and told them he was going to put something into his album. Said and done, this “sample” was nothing more than a live improvisation.

Singing from the village is another of the main ingredients of Broken and New Orleans. They interpret in Pamplona Elhadji Ndiaye, who died in the hands of the National Police, and who previously was Life the largest, with Dundu ñuule amna alone. Africa United Brigade, another good example of how to weave the community, has participated in it.

Pamplona After Barcina

The Broken have received much more than style from New Orleans. In 2005 they were inspired by the festival that took place after Hurricane Katrina to hold the change elections in Navarre. Build an Iruñea without UPN “How?” They offered one of the possible answers to the question: party and dance are necessary.

But black music has come many times only to Euskal Herria, and in general to the white West, according to Celestino. “At first, black music has a direct relationship with politics, for obvious reasons. If we want to make black music, we have to look for connections, but it can't be a photocopy. We have to respond to local problems with local messages and with a mix of local styles. That’s why we are always open to new vaccinations.”

All the conspirators in Pamplona are clear that it is not something planned as a collective. For Celestino, “it’s been like guerrilla warfare. We have met several people and friends and have created a dynamic on which we base our relationships.” Asked about his influence, Ceslestino is not so clear. “More than creating new things, perhaps the movements that came before have been given visibility, and we have been part of the same movement of different styles.”

In fact, black music is not a style, it's more a way to do things. For Gilroy, “black art should be able to use opposing objects and elements and give the impression that it does not produce any effort. It should look fresh and simple. If it’s made you sweat, you haven’t done your job well.”

This will include individual and collective dichotomy. “Led Zeppelin or The Beatles cannot be understood without peers, musical groups become individuals. Broken or Sustraiak doesn't happen that way: the members of the group are changing and the community becomes part of the group. The model of organizing groups and music also has to be revolutionized in that sense.”

To deal with these topics, the Atlantiko Beltza meetings were organized in Katakrak, where the kitchen is the main source of conspiracy, as the song recognizes on the bank of the Gumbo River, and where books, debates and music theory were the central axis.

In these days there was talk of the need to break with several paradigms that have come since the 1980s. In two ways: how things are organized and how they are sung. “We believe that the era of rock is exhausted and that we have to try to do different things, probably not new. And this reflection is increasingly widespread in Euskal Herria”.

In those days they said it was time to get rid of guitars. “The guitar hasn’t given a single anthem to this city in recent years,” one of the interventions that have been uploaded to Soundcloud is heard. Obviously, the guitar is considered a symbol, but it has some truth: “Repeating the aesthetics and refrains of punk times is of no use at all. They are ambushed and have become autoparodies.” This model change is the one that brings, among others, those of Las Nolas de Pamplona and those of Broken, DjReimy, The Titanans, DJ Budin and those of Skabidean. New messages, new images and new molds.

On May 20, the second line will be held from the Gaztetxe Maravilllas to the Errotxape line. Black music will be its liberating political sense in the footsteps of the attendees: because life is the biggest and it must be celebrated. And the hymn will have to bring the parties. And vice versa, of course.