In March 1996 came to the Basque music archive Eresbil seven wooden boxes with 634 cylinders in their interior.Los wax cylinders were precursor discs of music, used in the phonograph devised by Edison in 1877. The set of cylinders transferred from the Historical Archive of Bizkaia to Eresbil was a musical collection composed by the Ybarra family towards 1898-1905.

Most cylinders come from record companies in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia, or rather from cylindrical ones, but 150 were recorded in two phonographic companies in Bilbao: 144 in house Widow of Sofedo and Son and the other six in the piano store of Enrique García.

In the cylinders with the seal of the Sofedo widow there is everything: Opera fragments of Verdi or Wagner, zarzuela, Spanish songs, habaneras... But there are also some Basque songs and zortzikos, most sung by Mr. Maguregi (surname yes, but there are no names on the stamps): Agur nerebiotzeco, Iru dámacho, Izazu nitzas cupira... On the contrary, the six recordings of Enrique García obtained by the Ybarra are Basque songs: Betti maite, Euskalduna, Goy Zeco and Sarra.. all in Mr Arriaga's voice.

Most of the cylinders of the Ybarra family came to the file in very poor condition. They were removed from the original boxes and the cotton they collected from the outside was removed. The damage caused by humidity was very significant, probably as a result of the flooding in Bilbao in 1983. Some cylinders were broken, others seemed burned and most were occupied by fungi. Those who could be saved were then well cleansed. They were subsequently digitised, some of which are currently available on the Eresbil website.

And so, thanks to the hobby of the Ybarra family, which thanks to the richness was not in anyone's hands to buy the phonograph and the cylinders, and the conservation efforts made in the last decades, we have had a lot of Basque songs of very poor sound quality, but valuable.