Agony Without Ecstasy: Glosadors

At a Sant Antoni celebration in Muro one year, a friend and I took ourselves away from our group that was assembled at a bar terrace in order to investigate what could only have been described as a God-awful racket. It was being made by an elderly lady and a younger gentleman. She was playing the ximbomba, he wasn't, and they were taking turns in making utterances in a tuneless half-sung fashion. I knew what they were, as I had encountered such utterances before, though not with the "musical" accompaniment. They were glosadors, two of the many Mallorcan performers of the art of the "glosa".

It's impossible to describe glosadors as singers, as they specialise in singing only in the loosest sense of the word. What they aren't, are straightforward verse poets. The glosa can and does veer off at a tangent, an improvisational element being important, as the glosador rarely, if ever, performs alone; he or she is normally in "competition" with at least one other and quite often with several others. The improvisation, indeed the whole performance, can also be aided by alcohol. Some glosadors stick to water in order to lubricate the vocal chords, such as they are, but others can take on board copious amounts of wine or mezcla, so much so that the performances become more like drinking-song contests.

The glosador tradition dates back at least to the nineteenth century when "professional" glosadors emerged who would travel the island to take on rivals in glosa combats. The glosadors, historically, have played an important part in Mallorca's culture, not just because they are part of a folk tradition but also because they were a vital conduit for disseminating information.

Mallorquín, as with other local Mediterranean dialects and lesser languages, used not to be written, and one reason why it wasn't written was because few Mallorcans would have been able to read it. Lack of education and little by way of print media made the written word pretty much redundant. Those who could read were the elite and they wouldn't have been reading Mallorquín, even if scripts or texts had been available. So the glosadors were a means of communication. Their songs could be ribald, but they also provided political and social commentary, with satire an essential ingredient.

The lack of written Mallorquín means that little of the work of glosadors from years ago has been captured for posterity. While some will have been handed down, in the time-honoured fashion by which storytelling is passed on, only fragments will have been. The essence of the glosa was, in any event, of the time, rather than it being folk storytelling. There is an example, however, of a combat that took place in 1944 in Felanitx and which was written down. What is quite revealing about this contest was that it was of course conducted in Mallorquín, and yet it took place at a time when Catalan and Catalan dialects were supposedly banned - for public purposes at any rate. Perhaps it demonstrates that the totality of proscription wasn't as total as is generally assumed. And perhaps it also shows that it was the glosadors who helped to keep the popular use of Catalan and Mallorquín alive before the Franco regime did start to relax its linguistic prohibition.

Nowadays, the glosadors are identified with the politics of language. One of them, Santa Margalida's "Xurí" (most glosadors have nicknames), contributed to a publication in defence of Catalan in which he referred to history repeating itself in Catalan being attacked. The glosadors are, therefore, very much part of the wider movement to defend the island's Catalan culture, and at a dinner ahead of the Sant Antoni fiestas in Sa Pobla, mayor Biel Serra, a member of the Partido Popular who is one of the more sympathetic towards language defence in the party, fought an impromptu glosa battle with opposition political leaders. 

The glosa is most certainly an acquired taste. The chances are that you wouldn't have a clue what the glosadors were on about, while the style can verge on the excruciating. But this is down, in no small part, to the fact that the local accent sounds as though it is being spoken/sung by someone who is in agony. This is the nature of the Mallorquín dialect and accent, however. The vocal sound isn't lovely; it isn't ecstatic, it is in pain. Yet for all that glosadors may seem impenetrable to the foreign observer, it should be noted that they play and have played a significant part in the island's culture. Go along and see them some time, and just laugh when the Mallorcans laugh.



Xurí featured in this glosador combat; Xurí is the young one.



 
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