ZUZENEAN

Published by DEIA, April 7, 2011



After one of my concerts a person came up to me and told me how much he was impressed with the spectacle. Everything got his attention, not only because he like the event but more for the difference that it seemed for him as to when he see it on television.

Television and the computer screen have become our windows to the world, in addition to be a source of infinity events we can have, news or spectacles. Today, and thanks to the more present technology, we have an absolutely giant-sized access to everything a series of information and concepts through the different screens that populate our lives, that's to say, we attend all in a virtual way and amazingly we are getting used to it so that when we attend a live spectacle, everything produces a surprise on us even admiration because we are not accustomed to get things done in reality. And this more and more general current invades us completely; leading us even to have a valueless vision of what it is the real life.

Live concerts have a special and magical energy. In my work, the recordings acquire tones, they harvest many different textures but they lack of strength and the freshness of the here and now in front of the public. Certainly, we will not be able to express there with the same quality as in a recording, but we substitute it for that one-of-a-kind vitality and energy that makes everything be much more intense.

Somehow, our lives are getting to be a continuous going back and forth of more and more decaffeinated doings, as if we lived everything in third gear person, so when we experience something intense and in for real, we are shocked and surpasses us. We have to break that tendency and letting oneself be taken away for what really presses our chest.... It’s a challenge and to me, challenges, is what I like.


www.kepajunkera.com

EDADEAK

Published by DEIA, March 31, 2011




I have three trikis (diatonic accordion) on the table while I talk about the different variants at interpreting the trikitixa. I try to make them see the different rhythms, sounds and styles that have developed through our history in connection with what we call the diatonic accordion. While my chat flows between songs and laughter, I become aware of something amazing. The young that assisted the master class scrutinize with their gaze, listen with much attention, discovering for themselves the maximum of knowledge to demonstrate of what they are capable, dissimulating sometimes a timidness that restricts their lofty potential of understanding new ideas and concepts. But the people of more age don’t act in that manner and in view of the fact that their capacity of adaptation to the newness is minor, they wager more to share and to be guided from others.

We overvalue the youth and their capacities, forgetting about how important as to know as in knowledge is having something to say. They have always advised us to begin as soon as possible to learn how to play an instrument, to paint, to write... But of what does knowing to the perfection of color and textures combinations or concatenating an ocean of chords to the perfection suit someone's purposes if one has nothing to express with it? The youth is a gift, but the experience is a degree.

I have met many trikitilaris that began very late and perhaps technically had big gaps yet they are purveyed with abundance, because they knew how to transpose in the bellows their experiences of life and catches the public with magic of what one does not learn, of what turns out well after living and assuming the flamboyance without fear, getting carried away for, simply, being all that they can be.

To express what we have inside should be obligatory and admiring the people shaped by the passage of time also. They lose fear and they win courage, they are near-perfect... Let’s see if they teach us (and we let ourselves be taught) how to. Each one in their own way.


www.kepajunkera.com

HITZ BIZIAK

Published by DEIA, March 24, 2011




NOVELS, essays and, of course, poetry are the roads that writers walks through when they want to express themselves by means of the words. They, in addition to be the fundamental part of communication, are the basic piece in many of the artistic representations of the human being which is capable of. And poetry is, in my opinion, the one of more extraordinary expression for the intensity that has to expose the deepest feelings in few words.

Hurtado de Amezaga, the estuary, Abando's station, el Casco Viejo (Downtown), the New Plaza and the Café Boulevard were the selected places to pay tribute to the illustrious native of Bilbao, Blas of Otero. Sabina de la Cruz (the poet's widow), José Ángel Iribar, José Fernández de la Sota, Gurutze Beitia and I, participated in a literary route to celebrate the anniversary of the poet’s birth , walking through the city and reciting his poems in an interesting proposal, not only to bring closer the culture to the streets but also to carry it out with people from different aspects of life that, also, showed the full willingness for such purpose.

Blas of Otero, poet (1916-1979), was born in Bilbao and moved to Madrid during his childhood for economical reasons. There he began to study law, returning to Bilbao for circumstances that marked his introspective character which will be seen reflected in his work. He seized to religion, friendship and the art to live a life that was nothing easy and it is in the poem where, without a doubt, he found a true understanding place to his needs and his innermost desires. His work carried a constant evolution, going through what's mystic, the existential and, finally, a most social stage, reflecting the crisis and the encounters that had took place during his life.

Words are the feeling's weapon and we hold on to them when we want to express the innermost of ourselves. As Otero wrote: “If I have lost my life, time, everything... the only thing left I have is the word". And to us... also.


www.kepajunkera.com

MISIOAK

Published by DEIA, March 17, 2011



WHEN they asked the possibility of writing a column in the newspaper to me, the idea surprised me and filled me with illusion, beginning a new road in which, I could experiment, the same as in music, the possibility of transmitting one point by view, a personal way to understand life.

Many people have given me an uncountable list of singers, musicians, special acts, cultures events of countries that I have visited, etc in order that it would be echoed in my albums. And that's where this column has served me as tool in order to bring into light the many ideas and events experienced in life that has been coming to me.

One of these themes is the one of the Day of the Missions that will be celebrated next Saturday March 19 under the motto "It is time of dreaming shared projects". Wars in cover, battles for oil, diamonds, hunger, the diseases ... The Truth is That the worldwide perspective and more in the third world is not very encouraging but we cannot forget either that if the panorama is pessimistic on one hand, on the another one we have the example of people that works on the above-cited Missions, that they fight against it, offering their lives in favor of the well-being of the fellow being, always from the respect and the admiration of their town’s idiosyncrasy and on top... in exchange for nothing. Leading men that, unlike what styles today, they prefer to give than to receive and fight against injustice and despotism with the coherence as their like only weapon.

It is anguish to think about the disappointments and the problems that there are to surpass every day while from our comfort it is hard for us to place ourselves in their shoes. This Saturday is the day to take notice of friends, neighbors or our relatives that have achieve by their means of effort and dedication in far away lands. May these lines be useful as a tribute to what this next Saturday we are going to live in the course of all our geography. This goes to you!

www.kepajunkera.com

INAUTERIAK

Published by DEIA, March 10, 2011


In the course of the year there are events because of their characteristics keeps a narrow relation with us all. Still I remember those disguises of Indians, cowboys or anything else that we used to dress ourselves up to go out into the street and to have a good time, and "legally" for some days, to be able to be what one wanted to be.

I suppose that as in so many other things that the essences of these festivals do not remain much today. At the present almost all the celebrations, for much of legend or history that they treasure, they have become just mere days of enjoyment, a time of leisure, becoming scarcer.

It is not clear the origin of these festivals so colorists and happy as are the festivals of carnivals. There are several theories about it but I believe that the most exact talks to us about a pagan’s origins festival recovered or adapted, one more time, by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. The word Carnival comes from the Italian word "Carnevale", which means "the epoch in which you can eat meat," so what, as it is known, precedes Lent that goes from the Ash Wednesday to the Holy Thursday being an epoch of reflection and penance according to the Catholic rite. That means that, supposedly, the carnival would function as a kind of final goodbye to give way to an epoch of crisis and spiritual transformation. Today although in a very "light” way, as it keeps on being everything in our society, we keep on disguising ourselves and feeling that for a moment in our life is another with different circumstances, adding a little bit of mental health to our stressed spirit.

But there is a type of daily carnival in the course of the year in which, unlike to the other, the disguise we wear is inside, hiding a lot of things that we do not like while we circumvent other ones that we are ignorant of, returning to interpret that different paper even if we look outside or to our inner self. And so on 364 days a year ... after the carnival: out with the disguises, out with the masks and Why not? To always have fun. What prevent us?

www.kepajunkera.com

GARUNA

Published by DEIA, March 3, 2011




The heat of the spotlights on my forehead and on my hand. My brain tries to concentrate on the music that I am interpreting. I want to focus on what I am doing. I look at the public, I see their faces and I start feeling the music but at the same time, in my mind, many thoughts start passing by and experiences lived. I close my eyes and I feel.

It has always been thought that the brain that is divided into two hemispheres divides its functions according to one thing or another. Thinking, talking, reasoning at the left side and the emotional, space at the right. It was thought that when carrying out a task one of the hemisphere according to its nature was used, but now one knows that, in spite of that there are functional sides, when we accomplish certain activities, as in learning how to play an instrument, the functions are distributed finally in both areas creating a more complex neuronal network. It has also been discovered that the brain regenerates the functions of every area making dependent on the needs of the same ones at the moment , that is, that if for any reason that it is there is an area of the brain that we stop using, he himself recycles it allotting other functions, for example, a person that becomes blind, within time the brain adjusts the cerebral areas in vision to new functions as in smelling, breathing, feeling etcetera, what turns our brain into the most adaptable and incredible organ that we have, almost as something of magic.

Music lovers admire the interpreter's fingers without stopping to think that everything as much as they make their fingers do, everything as much as he feels and he is capable to transmit, is also born in their mind. Thanks to it we think, feel and we talk. It helps us to relate with the world outside and to create our inner side. It knows everything about us and, on the other hand, we can only manage by intuition to know something of everything that it saves.

A fascinating capable machine that translates complex chemical formulas, in feelings, sensations, state of humor....... Or is it that there is something more?

www.kepajunkera.com

OIHANEAN

Published by DEIA, Feb. 24, 2011




A helicopter flies over an area of the Amazonian jungle. They control a supposed incursion of lumberjacks of furtive appropriate trees from the jungles of Peru next to the frontier with Brazil. All of a sudden, they discover a village inhabited by native people that attended amazed to such a fantastic and mutual discovery. The problem of deforestation and illegal felling of trees in the Amazon, the planet’s lung, is already known, but reading this new discovery, one more time, of native people that live apart in the jungle is something that has surprised me, arousing several reflections in me.

Day by day they tell us that they have discovered several animal species, unexplored corners and, even now, tribes that remained isolated, while in the meantime we, the proud ones belonging to the first world, we toil in discovering water in Mars, solar stains, etc. We want to span outside without clearly knowing what we have here at home?

Sometimes I think that the human being is the most absurd species on the face of the earth. We strive to protect animals in danger of extinction, forests and natural surroundings and, even, we work to preserve caves, works of art, coasts and, per contra, almost nobody thinks that one’s own mankind should be protected, not only that, we even think that we do to them a favor when discovering them and abducting to our way of life. We cannot permit that money and interests finish with them and their life form. They are the perfect photo of our past roots, the one we are always try to achieve and never are sure to have gotten. We are lucky enough to be able to live our origins through them.

Imagine what sensations they had to experiment when seeing a helicopter for the first time. It's sure that it would be the same for us when discovering the most fantastic of the manned UFOs.

And again the history repeats itself; they are the same, we 5 centuries ago on horseback and now suspended in mid-air.

A new opportunity for, this time, to do better... I hope.

www.kepajunkera.com