HERRIA

Published in DEIA, Nov. 18, 2010





WHEN after an adventure that I have lived this past year and with the results in your hand to present it in public, you can feel of types of sensations. You always create a kind of profound respect of everyone's opinion towards your work. . One knows all that he has lived, felt, and even what it represents for him all that he has experienced in life, but the great question that always comes to my mind is: How do I make myself express to others and to make them have an image, the closest possible, of the outcome? Herria is one of the most special and intensive albums that I have had opportunity to present. Recorded in New York, Oakland, Paris, Casablanca, Istanbul, Athens, Boise Idaho, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Antonio Texas, Hawaii and Bilbao, this record is like the final attainment of an incredible project. In this occasion I have counted with the help, among others, of Eleftheria Arvanitaki, the voices of Chelle's and Friends, the quintet of Dave Douglas, the incredible All Nations Singers, the people of the Boise´s Choir, NOKA, Amuma Says No, the Texan music and so on, more then 130 artists of 28 countries or writers like Bernardo Atxaga and my friend Xabier Amuriza. A whole challenge of diaries, journeys, airports, taxis, education, schedules etc. Remembering the previous ones Etxea and Kalea, Herria has supposed a new turn around focus, something like curling the curl just a little more of the efforts and the complicities of it all. I do not exaggerate if I say that I am very proud of the outcome. It is not a perfect work but definitely I have counted on great collaborators and the perfect team. Result: 23 songs in which we have overturned to the last straw of what we have inside, literally emptiness, in a job that I hope will produce oceans of sensations in all those who decide to undertake this journey, around the world, just like our ancestors carried out in search of a better life. Kaixo denori, hona hemen Herria!


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SINFONÍA

Published in DEIA, Nov 11, 2010



Sometimes we have to forget what one knows to be able to imagine what he needs. At times it results more interesting how to create and discover than to compile the necessary knowledge. It is complicated to assume why the human beings becomes mentally blinded in establishing laws and concepts of almost invariable nature, knowing about the relativity of the things. While we were making a comment about the curious existing connotation between the music, mathematicians and physics, a friend of mine talks to me about the theory of The Music of the Spheres in order to try to understand the existing harmony in the universe. According to the theory, backed up by important thinkers like Pythagoras, the universe would function as a giant-sized musical instrument. Each heavenly body would broadcast a musical note in terms of the arithmetic proportions of its orbits around Earth. Something like what happens with the strings of a harp, whose tones depends on the length of each one of them. Combining the sounds of every sphere with the other ones, resounding only synchrony, so-called Music of the Spheres would be produced, that could even explain the origin of the universe. But when the German astronomer Johannes Kepler appears on scene he theorizes on what we really can say, the type of sound that emits each heavenly body, it is the velocity he moves with and not the distance that separates it from us. Today one knows that the atmosphere of the sun emits imperceptible sound waves audibly for us, but that would prove that heavenly bodies emit harmonious sounds confirming the above-cited Music of the Spheres. And again how relative that is. The more we know, the more we find out more varies our perception of what surrounds us. But there is something that remains invariable forever. The importance that it is to imagine, in creating, giving form or shape to the unknown, which is where the essences of all search is located, the absence of response.

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IRAGAN GUNE

Published in DEIA, Nov. 4, 2010


WHERE do we come from? Where do we go? Personally, I am more interested in the first one than the second. The future is still to decide and to become. I feel more attracted by the past because it is tangible, demonstrable. Our history is a succession of success and errors, of calmness and tempests that work in a cyclic way. But there is something in the past that impassions me. Where do we place the beginning of life? And who were their true main characters? Little by little, one realizes that the answers to all these questions are right in front of us. Just as to every disease supposedly has its own cure, just the same, every mystery has its explanation if we know how to look for it well, in the most unsuspected corners of our own planet. In an article of the National Geographic discovered that the Geomicrobiology Lab of the department of Geoscience of the University of Pennsylvania, USA, Jenn Macalady, is analyzing the chemical compounds and the ways of life that populate the so-called Bahamas Blue Holes. They are submarine caves in the Bahamas that simulate what could have been the land before the invasion of oxygen. It is believed that life on earth began 4 billion years ago and only 2.5 billion years that oxygen appeared on the planet. During the next 1.5 billion years the life on earth was based in lathe beings that were ignorant of the use of the oxygen as a source of energy itself. Because of conditions, these Blue Holes are the perfect ecosystem to study how life could have existed without oxygen and to solve many doubts of the beginnings. But it also opens a wide door to possible explanations to assume that the absence of oxygen does not limit the existence of life for us, not even in each and every one of the million planets that exist in the universe. At the end studying the past we create our future. What's magical of all this is carrying out an investigation over something we do not know, because it brings us closer to the true mystery, which is at the end what we feel attracted to, to the unknown.


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BIZI GOSEA

Published in DEIA, Oct. 28, 2010



Life teaches that neither the good nor the bad shows up always under the same circumstances. A while ago I experienced an incredible situation under some determined conditions, after a while you can live another one subordinate to other different ones which seems as amazing to you or even more than the previous. 15 days ago I visited the center Zabaloetxe Goikoa of Aspace in Loiu, where I had one of the most fascinating encounters with its pupils, people with cerebral palsy and other added disabilities. The act consisted in answering the questions that various pupils of the center had prepared and in return being able to be close to the ones that have the courage to face their severer disabilities in different ways, using the live music to connect with them by means of the various sensorial channels. Seeing, hearing, breathing, smelling, communicating, moving... In The Course Of life, one loses track of the importance of all these words. It’s curious to have to live extreme situations to come to realize something so evident as if life is a great gift. They say that happiness is a feeling that is experienced by contrast and I believe that in the same way consciousness is something that also grows in our inner self, or better said, awakens, because of pure contrast. I assure you that in the course of the morning I felt so many innumerable sensations that time after time I would get goose pimples. The warmth, affection, the strong emotions, indescribable, gazes, is something that I cannot put into words. Enormous! Life has to be appraised in his fair measure. So many times we blind ourselves in not being happy, we do not know how to diminish the importance of and we do not savor what we have simply for not being aware of it. When you attend to one of these events, one believes he is doing them a favor and ...Do you want to hear a secret? It’s quite the other way around. How much happiness you gave to me that day! Only I wait that this, that still it lasts... continues. If not, I can always go back to visit again. Besarkada handi bat!

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30 URTE

Published in DEIA, Oct. 21, 2010


There are moments in the life that one does not expect. They appear and invade everything around with a tremendous force, producing a kind of crash of sensations of the most surprising. Moments that are not expected enrich less. Unique experiences knowing that the transcendent and special they are, you begin to enjoy them long before they even take place. Next October 23 the Conservatory of Leioa celebrates their 30 anniversary. In order to celebrate such event the following choirs will participate: La Kantoría, San Juan Bautista Abesbatza y Leioa Kantika Korala, as well as the Young Orchestra of Leioa, they will perform in the Palacio Euskalduna Auditorium of Bilbao. In the first part of the act, the 3 choral associations directed by Basilio Astulez will sing, while after that it will be the turn of the Young Orchestra of Leioa under the direction of Margarita Lorenzo of Reizabal and finally to conclude the act with Magnificat of Josu Elberdin, in which I will personally collaborate. When they invited me for the concert my feelings were of an immense joy. It’s very special to be able to share stage with them. Not only for who are they, but to be able to experience many things by their side. I have always felt attracted by the sensation of discovering new values that happen after having taken care of one's, taught and somehow given a shape. That labor of the county’s singers that they take care of, in every level, from very many young children that attend the conservatory, gyms... It will be so exciting to be able to feel and experiencing next to them that young energy of new hopes and illusions. So important as in hearing them, is as to see them and being aware that all of them are the product of your their own personal effort, but at the same time of all and every one of the people of the Conservatory of Leioa. We know that it is easier to buy than to create, to check out than to teach but the reward on a personal and human level when you see all that effort you gave out to them is there and amazing...it’s priceless. Zorionak! (Congratulations)


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IGOR ANTÓN

Published in DEIA, Oct. 14, 2010



TO INTERVIEW people, to be able to materialize somebody well known’s work or their professional and personal career in a very short time is something that can be considered an art. In many times it will be an already known person, but other times we have opportunity to be able to read, to see or to listen to a different and original interview, that allows you to discover the interviewee's most interesting and valuable part. A little while ago the program "A vivir Euskadi" (To live The Basque Country) emitted what we recorded the cyclist, Igor Antón from Galdakao, and me, moderated by Aloña Velasco in which she joins two known characters to discuss side by side maintaining a social gathering. As soon as Igor, with his arm bandaged up of his last fall, and I sat at the table we felt comfortable with each other. The conversation was quite fluent and I felt much identified with him. We talked about a lot of things, of the similarities and the differences of our professions, of staying long days away from home, the nerves of the races or the concerts, of the previous ones, the nostalgias of our family, the friends, loneliness... Little by little I was discovering a humble and brave person to the fullest. I have always felt a great admiration for all these road warriors. People that fight to their exhaustion to find his way to the finish line. The very fact of imagining the effort is incredible that each and everyone of the cyclist’s members, from the first one to the very last one, they have to struggle in each lap, in each race. Looking into the Igor’s eyes I discover that incredible essence that has to have anyone that professionally climbs on the bicycle. It was fascinating to discover somebody like him, that saves in his gaze and in his shy smile the sacrifice and the dedication of a simple person, as nearly as all the ones that climb on top of the two wheels to demonstrate that still and thanks to their determination and their enthusiasm of overcoming, are able to reach farther away. Good Luck Igor in the future races, taken care on the road and a great, great deal of strength.

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CATATUMBO

Published in DEIA, Oct. 7, 2010



Midnight, surfing the Net trying to find something. I’m searching but I really don’t have a clear idea of what I want and then all of a sudden, a small but a shocking discovery that I am going to talk about, without even visiting it . The place is in the National Park "Ciénagas de Juan Manuel", northwest of Venezuela, in the flowing river of Catatumbo and the lake Maraciabo. There takes place what today is named "El Relámpago Catatumbo" (Catatumbo Lightning). A lightning that strikes in the same place between 140 and 160 nights a year. Every time that the phenomenon happens it shines brightly between 7 and 10 continuous hours, with a frequency of 50 discharges per minute, around 1,176,000 lightning’s per year, generating 10 % of the ozone layer of the planet. So it is that in only 10 minutes he could generate enough energy to turn on all the bulbs of South America. Scientists allege two reasons for this to happen always in the same place: On one hand the stagnation of thousands of thunderclouds that collide with the mountain ranges that surround the enclave and an the other hand the high concentration of methane gas . Every time I can I observe the electric storms that visit us. The different type of wind that announces the storm. The lightning a true symbol of the ancestral and what's uncontrollable. The spectacular main star of nature that still has been impossible for us to subdue and that interprets his character under the same script, time after time, since the world began. And finally the thunder, deafening companion that reminds us what we are and what we will never be able to be. In Venezuela they have the belief that the Catatumbo Lightning has place because thousands of glowworms concentrate together at that point to honor the fathers of the Creation. I do not know what explanation, unscientific, we could give to the capricious distribution of our lightning’s, but as soon as I can I will enjoy their forms, lights and explosions again. A whole spectacle within the reach of everyone.

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