A look at the past of the galoubet-tambourin but also at its future: a musical anthology from the Middle Ages to today and tomorrow, through the baroque, classical and traditional repertoires, led by Michel Montanaro and André Gabriel.During the Middle Age and the Renaissance, the practice of whistle-and-drum playing developed throughout Europe, at all levels of society. The inhabitants of the New World, in their turn, were introduced to this practice, made popular by Spanish seamen, and adapted it to their own needs. Then, in the Baroque Age, those who, to a certain extent, were credited with the novel views held in this Age of Enlightenment, took advantage of such an “exotic” fashion and imitated it in order to draw closer to the lower classes. Later on, the Romantic Movement and the awakening nationalistic schools of thought were to regard this type of musical custom as a symbol of “ethnicism”, and to use it later subconsciously as a pretext for their subsequent folklorisation.

More recently, regionalism, with its inevitable need to pick up identity tags, has completed the picture. For the last twenty years or so, the established way of teaching these instruments has prioritized written, prescriptive, learned tradition – a tradition legitimized in part by the plethoric 18th century repertoire of “Rural Music”. A number of excellent instrumentalists were trained in this way. The present album offers a re-interpreted sum of all these historical trends. Its aim is to provide an authentic anthology, that will at the same time preserve this particular heritage, along with some indispensable guidelines, and promote a personal or modern view of this century-old musical practice.

Petrona Martínez, an emblematic figure of bullerengue (a rare exclusively female “sung dance” in Colombia) shows here all her talent as a folklorist: improvisation, a universe of superstitions and legends, a chronicle of local life –and always Africa in the background. During the religious festivals of St John and St Peter (24th and 29th of June), the pregnant women, concubines and unmarried mothers, who could not take part in the fandangos (popular dances), used to gather on a patio to “clap hands and beat drums”. One of them would sing, improvising verses, whilst the others would respond in chorus. Between the songs, the women would tell each other riddles and saucy jokes. During these evening parties, or bullerengue, ñeque (home-made sugar cane alcohol) would be drunk. The dates and places for these meetings were communicated discreetly between the bullerengueras belonging to the same “sistership”. Such were the origins of the bullerengue tradition. Throughout her artistic career Petrona Martínez has been nominated three times for the Latin Grammy Awards for the best folk album, winning in 2021 with Ancestras.

The tradition of qawwali, originally limited to mausoleums and brotherhoods, has now spread everywhere, carried by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan –an exceptional performer: Sufi poems and incandescent lyricism. While the Mongols conquered by the sword and oppression, the Sufis attracted peoples through the richness of their culture. During their gatherings, these Sufis listened to the poems of their masters, sung by musicians known as qawwal. Their music, enriched with new literary and musical elements, ultimately became the most widespread musical genre in Hindustani music. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s group is the leading proponent of this secular tradition. “As each verse was sung, the emotion-filled audience uttered cries of joy that encouraged the musicians. Their gestures marked the syncopations and they swayed from one foot to the other. Deep silence fell when the singer embarked upon one of his subtle vocal variations...”

Classical Music

Classical Music

In Indonesia, in the Sunda country (west of the island of Java), in about the middle of the 19th century, in order to entertain the princesses of the city of Cianjur, it occurred to a group of musicians, led by a prince smitten with poetry, to create a new type of small instrumental formation. It included, besides the kacapi zither, one or two additional, smaller rincik zither, and a suling flute. This ensemble was designed to accompany a narrator of pantun poems. Soon, several styles were developed in the different regions to adapt to this new genre –called tembang sunda (“Sundanese singing”)–, and in accordance with which several cycles of anonymous poems of all kinds were set to music. Tembang sunda is the music form that is the most widespread in Sunda. In the villages, when night falls, peasants often gather around a few musicians and listen for hours to these traditional poems. They are tales of unlucky love, or nostalgic descriptions of dazzling mountainous landscapes or unexpected lakes, or evocations of the past splendor of the kingdom of Pajajaran (5th-16th c.). The sources of inspiration are endless, but all of these poetic themes run deep in the souls of the people of Sunda. The repertoire draws not only from the ancient, anonymous Hindu heritage, but also from numerous poems and compositions from the 19th century to the present day.

The music of Satyajit Ray's cinematic masterpiece (Jalsaghar, 1958), by Ustad Vilayat Khan (sitar) with the participation of Imrat Khan (sitar, surbahar), Bismillah Khan (shehnai), Akhtari Bai [aka Begum Akhtar] –thumri singing, Salamat Ali Khan –khyal singing etc. 'After the box office failure of my second film Aparajito (“The Unvanquished”), I was a little unsure as to what kind of film I should make next. After some deliberation, I decided on a film featuring singing and dancing –a formula which usually worked with the Indian audience. I chose a popular short story –Jalsaghar– about the last days of a music loving feudal baron. I was fortunate to be able to use some of the leading singers and instrumentalists for the film. As composer, I chose the great sitar virtuoso Vilayat Khan who was most ably assisted by his younger brother Imrat Khan, also a sitar virtuoso. The two of them provided superb solos and duets for the background music for which –with the exception of violins– only Indian instruments were used. All the background score is raga-based.' (Satyajit Ray)

While African masks are readily identified, their voices –although essential– are much less well-known: they speak and sing. The most modest masks, intended for entertainment, as well as the most powerful ones with strong supernatural power, use music just as expressively. Since the Dan consider their masks as supernatural beings, neither the spoken nor sung voices of their incarnation can be human. Their wearers must transform their voices into the voices of supernatural beings. The Dan have perfected three techniques to achieve this –they either distort their own voice, alter their vocal timbre by speaking into an instrument, or replace the voice with instruments hidden from the uninitiated. Technically speaking, a person wearing a mask acquires beneath this disguise another personality. According to African religious belief, the wearer of a mask abandons his human personality to incarnate a supernatural being, most often an ancestral spirit, a mythical figure or a bush spirit.

The 1960's... The Royal Palace, the seat of the Khmer monarchy since the end of the preceding century, then sheltered many musicians and dancers who were the base for the prestige of which these venerable walls were so proud. Every morning as one walked down the boulevard in front of the entrance fa�ade, one could hear fireworks of limpid sonorities: for four hours the pinpeat orchestra with it's crystalline gongs joined in the training of the royal dancers or by itself rehearsed music for a coming ceremony. At that time, there was hardly a month when court rituals did not require the presence -or rather the participation- of palace musicians and almost as often ballerinas whose fame was world-wide in spite of their rare public appearances.

Cinuçen Tanrikorur's case is that of a genius who, revitalized by an ancestral heritage, crystallizes the transports of his imagination in traditional forms and intentions; the crystals are the creations, the forms are the modes and the various frameworks of composition (pesrev, semâï, beste etc.), and of improvisation (taksim) and the intention is that of traditional art in general and of Moslem art in particular: it must contribute to the most central function of the man who is to be an intermediary between heaven and earth, the khalifat (cf. Titus Burckhardt, “The Art of Islam”). Cinuçen Tanrikorur's style is a kind of paroxysm of Turkish savant art. The voice is characterized by the variety and the subtlety of intonations and timbres, and is placed under the sign of the symbolic conjunction of air and water: a fluidity which transcends both of these elements to the point of evoking the ether, and then the quintessence of sound. The Sufi doctrine of the alternation of light and veils is prolonged here in the domain of sound vibration: one sometimes finds oneself where the “when” and the “where” no longer exist, when “sound” and “silence” are one. The initial intention and the concomitant ambiance permitted the autodidact to invent a style of the ud which is completely traditional at its foundation and completely unusual in its form. The result is a different tuning of the lower strings (4th, 4th, 4th, 4th, 5th), and a right hand technique of playing without a rolling motion, and a fantastic dynamic of the left hand which explores to the utmost the intimacy of each string in order to elicit harmonic resonances which had not even been suspected before. Lyricism, fluidity, precision and hypersensitivity are the requirements of this style which has already begun to develop into a school.

Fernanda Jiménez Peña (1923-2006) was born in 1923 in Utrera, one of the towns located in the main cantaora region. Hailed as one of the greatest cantaoras of the last decades, Fernanda accompanies her voice of echoing sobs with gesticulation and superhuman concentration. Silence, panting, and gestures of impotence and agony transform her more inspired concerts into magnificent, liberating events laden with tragic pathos. Bernarda Jiménez Peña (1927-2009), Fernanda’s sister, is a cantaora specialised in the bulerías, which she performs with incomparable mastery. Although the bulerías have been considered as a minor form of cante, they are extremely difficult to execute due to their pulsating rhythm and the exactitude of their compás. Bernarda’s bulerías convey infinitely complex psychological states and adapt to a wide variety of melodic lines, to create a personal, disorderly and expansive mood, further enhanced through her sense of intimacy and ability to move listeners.

Wang Weiping belongs to the generation of pipa lute performers that has taken over brilliantly from the historical masters, and is by no means inferior to them, as far as both virtuosity and musicality are concerned: traditional pieces and compositions under the emblematic patronage of the princess Wang Zhaojun. The pipa, an instrument with a rich repertoire and advanced playing technique, has long been in the hands of the professionals, and occupies an important place at the Conservatory as well as concerts. The generation born after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) has taken over brilliantly from its historical masters, Li Tingsong (Suzhou 1906-1976), Lin Shicheng (born in 1922 in Shanghai), and even Liu Dehai (born in 1937 in the Hebei), and is by no means inferior to them, as far as both virtuosity and musicality are concerned. Wang Weiping is one of the most remarkable representative of this new generation. Incidentally, it should be noted that Chinese culture is one of the few cultures in the world to grant women the rank they deserve as instrumentalists. She is a specialist in the thousand year old repertoire of Dunhuang scores transcribed by Ye Dong, which she has played in Hong Kong, Macao and Japan. She is pursuing her international career as a soloist and within the ensemble “Fleur de Prunus”, and is working with modern Chinese contemporary composers.

Music of Kabul with Indian influence and music of Herat by two masters displaying a wonderful cohesiveness: a perfect combination of the deep sound of Ustad Rahim Khushnawaz's rubâb (with its characteristic “skin sound”, with deep resonance from the sympathetic strings) and the brilliance of Gada Mohammad's dutâr, an octave higher. The two lutenists on this album represent two contrasting facets of Afghan musicianship: Rahim Khushnawaz is the “superior” musician in terms of technical expertise, range of expression, breadth of knowledge, and ability to improvise. Gada Mohammad's playing is more intuitive, following and accompanying the rubâb; yet, he can hold his own as a soloist, as these recordings show.