102 Javier Campos Calvo-Sotelo
the hearth to the stage, something unthinkable in the past. They demon-
strated that the audience wanted females, that pipes were attractive (and
not sacrilegious) in feminine hands; and that young girls could play them
as well as men. However, their activity barely surpassed the level of live
performances; Meniñas de Saudade were filmed for the documentary Así
es Galicia (This is Galicia), directed by Santos Núñez in 1964; and for
the film España Insólita (Amazing Spain) directed by Javier Aguirre in
1965. The band also had fleeting appearances in NO-DO (a Spanish state-
produced series of newsreels from 1943 to 1981). In 2010 Acuña com-
pleted the documentary Saudade, Retrato en Si Bemol (Saudade, portrait
in B flat), on the history of her mother’s band (Acuña 2013; PC 2018–
2019). Nonetheless, the girls of Saudade never recorded an album,
6
spoke
on the radio and TV, or verbally addressed the public. Their legacy is thus
rather silent and hard to grasp. In this facet, there is a strong contrast with
the next generation, who unexpectedly broke through gender constraints
in the 1990s.
THE THREE PIPERS: MERCEDES PEÓN, CRISTINA PATO,
AND SUSANA SEIVANE
Although before and after them there have been other important female
bagpipers in Galicia, Cristina Pato, Mercedes Peón, and Susana Seiv-
ane represent somehow a different category, a step above the rest, both
because of the quality and extensiveness of their output and because of
their iconic capacity to act as catalysts of the female uprising. They have
also exerted an important role in the renewal of Galician musical tradi-
tions and nation-building. In times of cultural globalization, permanent
crisis, and feminist struggle, they became the best ambassadors of the
country worldwide.
7
No one doubts that they are musical forces. All three have won quite a
few awards and deserved international recognition. But far from being a
homogeneous trio, among them there are notable differences. With respect
to their public image, they showed a spicy sensuality in record covers,
promotional imagery, and live performances.
8
Their narrative involved the
transgression of the Galician woman canon, subject to her father/husband/
children, aiming above all to marry, and dressing only in black once the
husband had died. However, despite the active and oppositional femininity
exhibited by Seivane and Pato, probably the most disruptive in the breach
of heteronormativity and production of a new femaleness was Mercedes
Peón; around the year 2000 she shaved her head (Sinéad O’Connor style)
and further addressed gender issues, occasionally in radical terms (see
next). Musically there are also remarkable divergences among them. Let
us consider their figures separately.
Cristina Pato Lorenzo remembers that her first contact with music was
at home, where the whole family used to sing around the accordion of her
father; she would never forget that social condition of music, “shared IN
community” (uppercase original; PC 2019). Pato’s debut record was Tol-
emia (Madness, 1999), and it was a very successful one.
9
The front cover
103 She Plays the Pipe
showed a young and smiley Pato with the bagpipe, in cheerful colors (see
Padrón and Sánchez 2013). Her ulterior green hair dyeing separated her
from mainstream stereotypes; despite her dynamic and varied career, bag-
pipes are always near (Figure 6.2).
Periodically she has released solo albums following an organized
process:
[Lately] I usually work with concepts (Migrations [2013], Rustica
[2015], Latina [2015]). I start with the idea of the story I’d like to tell
and from there I develop the content and prole of the recordings. . . . I
usually order works or arrangements from composers. . . . Once I have
everything ready, I start production: musicians, music, image, design,
videos, public image, record label and promotion. Since I moved to
NY in 2005, I control and direct the process from start to end.
(PC 2019)
Her participation in other recordings includes a notable guest appearance
in the Yo-Yo Ma & Friends 2008 album Songs of Joy and Peace, with
a Galician carol (“Panxoliña”), which she performed with the eminent
cellist (fragments of the rehearsal are available on http://bit.do/eTdV6).
Figure 6.2 Cristina Pato, the glocal Galicia
Source: Photo courtesy Xan Padrón, 2018.
104 Javier Campos Calvo-Sotelo
The record received a Grammy Award the following year, in the category
Best Classical Crossover Album.
Pato soon became a renowned pianist no less than piper. In fact, she
decided to abandon her life as a bagpiper in Galicia, around the beginning
of the twenty-first century, to devote her career to the piano in the USA.
There she works actively in the composition and performance of avant-
garde pieces (as a bagpiper and as a pianist), collaborating especially with
the Russian-Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. She has played with
the Chicago Symphony, Hartford Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, and
New York Philharmonic orchestras, with hybrid repertoires (Pato 2018).
About her setting up in America, she emphasizes the symbolic signifi-
cance of bagpipes:
My own experience in the eld of music in the USA . . . was based on
the simple strategy of accomplishing as many activities and alliances
as possible with the means I had around me. No one needs a bagpiper
on the other side of the ocean, but the qualities stemming from the
metaphor of the instrument itself (pastoral origin, a catalyst for the
survival of cultural identity) and its practice (centered in the commu-
nity and maintained by it) are universal values.
(Pato 2018: 60. GO)
In an interview in La Voz de Galicia, Pato explained: “[the bagpipe] is 30%
of what I do. Had it not been for it, I wouldn’t be here, it opened the doors.
It’s just that there’s much more than Cristina bagpiper” (Méndez 2018: 35.
GO). Her initiative The Gaita and Orchestra Commissioning Project is a
professional frame for avant-garde compositions with bagpipes (see http://
bit.do/eS8Zq). However, and a bit surprisingly, Pato’s strongest vocation
is teaching, and the reason for going on with the instrument:
Teaching is the strongest call I’ve had in recent years, with passion
and vocation. But the bagpipes are the means that open the doors to
the teacher, and so I continue my career as a soloist.
(Pato 2018: 62. GO)
Pato is the educational advisor of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble, affil-
iated with Harvard University. Over the years she has formed her own
stable band (the Cristina Pato Jazz Quartet) and the Galician Trio (with
accordion and percussion), organizing personally their tours and record-
ings, spanning almost the whole world. Additionally, Pato has created the
music festival Galician Connection (2012–2014), which was a fascinating
experience for her, and has received ample online attention. Her intellec-
tual career also deserves attention: among other titles she holds a doctor-
ate in Musical Arts from Rutgers University in 2008. In June 2019 Pato
was appointed Chair in Spanish Culture and Civilization at the King Juan
Carlos I Center (University of New York).
The complete list of Pato’s discography, videography, publications,
organization of events, educational activities, and others can hardly be
105 She Plays the Pipe
summarized here. Only on the subject of musical recordings, it includes
six solo albums, nine in collaboration, and participation in 28 more
(see her personal website, http://bit.do/eS8Z2; under her name it reads:
“Bagpiper, pianist, educator, writer, producer, composer . . . independent
artist!”). Overall her productions are characterized by a “glocal” and suc-
cessful bias, where Galicia and bagpipes still play an important role, but
within a spirited and ambitious transnational frame. The notion of “glocal”
implies hybrid cultural productions resulting from a dynamic interaction
between the local and the pressure of modern globalization; and therefore
“a potential new paradigm that is both post-national and post-peripheral”
(Colmeiro 2009: 217). Cristina Pato is an outstanding representative of
the exogamy dimension of current Galician-ness, as a dialectical tension
between the local homeland and the global infinity. In her own words:
Personally, I am particularly proud of my work with Yo-Yo Ma and the
Silkroad, and of having contributed to the projection of the Galician
bagpipe as a global instrument; through my work with them in clas-
sical music, with my American jazz quartet, with my Galician trio
in world music, and as a soloist with orchestras like the Chicago
Symphony or The New York Philharmonic.
(PC 2019)
Mercedes Peón Mosteiro self-defines as: “folklorist, researcher, choreog-
rapher, bagpipe and tambourine player, vocalist, composer, conductor, pre-
senter, producer, and businesswoman” (PC 2019). She is considered to be a
remarkable singer besides her pipe career, and has additionally carried out
a relevant labor as compiler of the oral Galician legacy in extensive field-
works.
10
Peón was for eight years presenter of the show Luar (Moonlight)
at the TVGA (Galician TV), where she introduced to the audience many
unknown Galician musicians, singers, and even just peasants, intensely
advocating local repertoires as alive and sustainable heritage. She has pub-
lished a few academic articles stemming from her research (e.g., Peón 2004).
At the beginning of her musical life, Peón did not like bagpipes: “I loved
the tambourine and the telluric trance that my body experienced playing or
dancing to the sound of these impressive ladies [tambourine players]” (PC
2019). It was due to the fascinating influence of José, a piper from Paradela
(Coruña), that she felt attracted to the instrument: “It was love at first sight. . . .
I suddenly found an instrument that really was part of the authenticity of the
musician; coherent, free, unregulated, intuitive and wild” (PC 2019). How-
ever, coinciding in this with Pato and unlike Seivane, in her recent works
bagpipes have lost weight: “the bagpipe is a brushstroke at some moments in
my last albums. I think until the third one it was an indisputable part of most
of the tracks, but in the last 10 years it’s no longer” (PC 2019).
Born in Coruña, currently Peón lives in the small inland village of Oza
dos Ríos (Coruña). She describes her career as follows:
My formation is linked to the collective creation of micro-habitats in
Galicia through eldwork for 20 years, until being able to understand
106 Javier Campos Calvo-Sotelo
those musical codes that reach the twentieth century. On the other
hand, working as a music producer stemmed from not wanting to
depend on external assessments; I am totally self-taught. My facet
of composer is linked to improvisation, political and social position-
ing and the search for new systems consistent with each emotional
moment translated into sound spaces.
(PC 2019)
Unlike Pato and Seivane, she has typically addressed gender issues in
her public discourse, e.g. discussing feminism (http://bit.do/eS82i). On
July 1, 2006, she opened a concert in Santiago de Compostela proclaim-
ing the Gay Pride. Currently she affirms that: “discrimination exists
because we live in a patriarchy in a sexist, racist, colonialist system”
(PC 2019).
Her TV programs in Luar became a fundamental part of her trajectory.
They enabled Peón to bring to the fore songs and dances of the innermost
Galicia, which was rewarding for her:
I was there eight years bringing village people. They taught us col-
lective creations and Galicia’s true musical language. . . . I made 278
programs; it was one of the best things I did in my life. . . . This re-
signied the villages, their speech, their customs.
(PC 2019)
Interestingly, Peón discovered a great musical variety within Galicia,
which most likely influenced her future works:
Each place, each village, had its own music resources that were con-
stantly evolving. Complex melodies, quarter tones . . . diverse nomen-
clatures . . . dierent ways of grasping the instruments. Continuous
inventions, compositions and improvisation.
(PC 2019)
Mercedes Peón has released five solo albums since her 2000 debut with
Isué (that is, in Galician slang) – totally based on her compilation research
labor, the same as many of her live performances (Figure 6.3; see her per-
sonal website, http://bit.do/eTeit).
Her motivations to compose involve critical assessments:
I always had an urgency to denounce through my own freedom. Free-
dom to speak of the situation of the language in Galicia (where only
10% of boys and girls speak Galician), of the patriarchal system that
surrounds the nation states.
(PC 2019)
Concerning her working method, Peón states that currently she does
not necessarily plan her recordings in advance, but when she accumu-
lates enough pieces, she goes into the studio with a view to creating a
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.