Otherlands Collaboration #4
Location: Pontecaldelas, Spain • Date: October 11, 2019
ABOUT THIS COLLABORATION
I'm up in Galicia, Spain and this is my first meeting with another fiddler for the project. Begoña Riobo and I met a few years back at Crisol de Cuerda, a fiddle/music camp in a small village outside of Burgos, Spain. She is full of amazing energy as a person and as a fiddler. We bonded over a mutual love of a good time with 5-string fiddles. While teaching at these camps, I'm surrounded by amazing musicians, but the schedules can be so busy that I never seem to make time for taking a lesson myself. I made it a priority to remedy this in Galicia and sat down with Bego for my first Galician fiddle lesson.
*To learn more about Begoña’s music and projects, please visit her Facebook Page
We started by talking about the Galician approach to fiddle ornamentation and where her repertoire comes from. In both cases, it's derived from the gaita, the Galician bagpipe. Often, the gaita material is in the key of C or D (or somewhere in between) and Bego has found that putting these tunes in A or G suits the fiddle better in terms of our own ability to drone strings and ornament notes.
Knowing that I was new to this music, she chose examples of two of the most standard Galician song forms to teach me—the muiñeira (in 3 beat) and the xota, pronounced “hota” (in 6 beat).
We started with “Muiñeira de Negros,” a traditional tune from the nearby town of Negros. Rather than approaching this one from a normal dance tempo, Bego showed me how its feel could be altered and melodic lyricism expanded by playing it more slowly. It was also my introduction to ornamentation. The movement is similar to a triplet but you don't want to hear the pitch of the quick extra note(s). This is accomplished by flicking the string so lightly that it only stops the vibration for a split second. The intention is to create a rhythm and you can ornament in this way with one to three fingers.
The second muiñeira, “Noitébrega,” is from Xosé Romero. After listening to Bego play the melody a couple of times, thinking that I felt the groove, I started to play rhythm along with her. Slowly, her expression changed to a bit of confusion, until she finally stopped playing and told me something was strange. Apparently, there were pickup notes before the down beat, but I felt those notes AS the downbeat. Basically, I was playing one beat off. (Oops.) She helped me shift my center of rhythmic gravity, and we moved on to the melody. The B part is full of ornamentation, and I just couldn't get it...until after a couple days of practice in time for our session.
We recorded our arrangement in an hórreo. These raised outbuildings are plentiful in the Galicia countryside and are used to dry grain. The circular “guards” above the legs prevent animals from crawling up and eating the grain. There was a large hórreo at the house I was staying at, and it seemed like a logical choice for fiddle duet to me. I made sure to test it first to see if we had enough room for our bows. Bego had never played in an hórreo before and found the sound of the fiddle quite cosy and pleasing. I agree.
Casey
CREDITS
Song: Muiñeira de Negros (traditional) / Noitébrega (Xosé Romero)
Music Arranged by: Casey Driessen & Begoña Riobo
Fiddle: Begoña Riobo
Fiddle & Audio/Video: Casey Driessen
Production Assistant: Emmette Driessen
Special Thanks: Alfonso Franco
To follow along the Otherlands project, please visit the Otherlands webpage, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.
