Basque music in the Pays Basque: Ensemble Hegiak at the Festival Ravel

The Festival Ravel, set in the Basque country of South West France, is an international gathering, or one with mostly French audiences but listening to international calibre performers. But this evening’s specialist Regional event was its quintessential piece of festival programming, for festivals from Aldeburgh to Salzburg need links to their location, and here was an evening designed to celebrate the spirit of this place. The five members of Ensemble Hegiak, singers and percussionists with a handful of traditional instruments arrayed on stage, offered a celebration of Basque traditional music, all short pieces requiring just one-hour and a quarter sans entr’acte. I knew nothing of any of this art, and was too late to acquire one of the too few printed programmes. (NB my first learning point: don’t arrive at these events with 25 minutes to go and expect a good seat or programme; seasoned festival-goers get all those). But my enforcedly innocent ear – no bad thing for a critic once in a while – was nonetheless beguiled throughout.

The txalaparta is a Basque pitched percussion instrument, with lengths of wood or stone struck with wooden sticks held vertically. Locally its name and sound suggests a ‘racket’, or the trot of the horse. But no horse ever trotted with the complex rhythmic interplay of percussionists (or ‘txalapartari’) Harkaitz Martinez de San Vicente and Mikle Ugarte, improvising at bewildering speeds with elbow-to-elbow proximity on the wooden, and later the stone, txalaparta. Such was the excitement they could generate, they resembled a single inspired four-handed person, one soul exulting in some astonishingly inventive star-dancing.

Star-gazing was more the mood of several vocal pieces, lyrical and ardent, usually strophic, and beautifully sung by Thierry Biscary, Ander Zulaika, and Eñaut Elorrueta. Their solos, duets and trios, sometimes all three in one item, were expressive in a recognisably folk style, the voice production having nothing of the cultivated manners of opera house or recital room, only the more authentic, because unmediated, humanity of great folk singers, a thrill familiar to all the world’s folk traditions. Perhaps they did not always need the microphones they used in the responsive and generous acoustic of this elegantly converted convent chapel, its beauty tonight enhanced by the coloured lighting deployed for various numbers.

Near the end, all five abandoned the microphones, and platform, just once for a piece in which four of the five each held cowbells of different registers, a pair in each hand, wandering the auditorium. Mahler’s use of these bells to evoke Alpine solitude came to mind, except that the vocal obbligato added by the remaining singer, by now resonated more with the outdoor sounds of some nearby Basque hillside. A magical item, followed by some audience one-note participation, providing a vocal pedal to the Ensemble’s singing, then clapping in time (well, near enough) to a livelier piece. So a festive mood to close.

But once the performers had all left, the instruments remained, and a large section of the audience took advantage – they had been also been ‘performing’ after all – to surge forward and try their hand at striking the txalaparta. There was quite a scrum of them (us), and we could now see that though no scores had been used of course, the note given by each plank or stone, B flat, C, G sharp, etc. was inscribed upon it. Observing that advancing scrum, my companion had referred to a “pitch invasion”, so has since claimed the prestigious ‘Pun of the Festival’ award.

Roy's press trip was funded by the Festival Ravel