From Fiesta To Folk: Els Valldemossa

On the Formentor promontory there is an old farm called Ses Cases Velles. It used to be the property of the family of Miquel Costa i Llobera, the Pollensa-born poet who, most famously, wrote "El Pi de Formentor". On an interior patio there is a bronze bust of the poet. The sculptor was a Basque artist by the name of Horacio de Eguía, whose work can be found in other parts of Pollensa and Mallorca: a bust of the painter Anglada Camarasa in Pollensa; monuments to the Archduke Louis Salvador and Santa Catalina Thomàs in Valldemossa; monuments to Father Juniper Serra and Ramon Llull in Palma; and a bust of Queen Sofia at the Marivent Palace.

Eguía died on 15 January 1991, so this year does not represent a notable anniversary. But he was born on 15 April 1914. Perhaps the centenary of his birth will be celebrated; it should be. Eguía's story is one worthy of a whole article, and I shall doubtless write one. But for now, the story to tell has to do with Eguía's accidental role in discovering what became one of Mallorca and Spain's most important music acts - Els Valldemossa.

In 1959, Eguía was resident at the Hotel del Artista in Valldemossa, an establishment that was described as an "oasis of Mallorcan talent" in the middle of the last century. It was in that year that Eguía introduced three brothers, who, together with a cousin and a girlfriend, were performing at the hotel, to the director of Palma's Tito's nightclub. The three brothers were Rafel, Bernat and Tomeu Estaràs, whose father had created a group for folk dance and dancers in the 1920s. The cousin was Maties Estrades and the girlfriend was Bernat's. She was Swedish, and her name was Nulle Oigaard. Together they formed what for a time was known as Los Existencialistas de Valldemossa, a name that was shortened to Los Valldemossa. They went on to perform at Tito's for three years until 1962, and in that year the group took charge of another Palma nightclub, Tagomago. They later appeared on the BBC and in 1969 took part in what has gone down in the history of the Eurovision Song Contest as the most bizarre contest of all. Held in Madrid, Salvador Dali was responsible for its publicity, but just as odd was the result. It was a four-way tie, one of the joint winners being Salome, who was backed by the Estaràs brothers.

The group which, despite the deaths of two of the brothers in the past six years, is still going, were essentially a pop act for several years. At the height of their fame in the 1960s, they included among their number a ballerina-come-vocalist who had been voted Miss Balearics and Lady of Honour of Miss Spain in 1961. She was Margalida Llobera, better known as Margaluz, who was to later acquire further celebrity for her films and theatrical performances and who had been a protégé of the Mallorcan impresario Paco Vicens who died last year. In 1970, Los Valldemossa scored a massive summer hit with "Fiesta" (Margaluz, who was pregnant, was temporarily replaced by an American, Genia Tobin).

Two years after the success of "Fiesta", things began to change. The brothers' background, as can be noted from their father's founding of the Parado de Valldemossa folk dance group, was in folk music - Mallorcan folk music, and this meant music sung in Catalan. Though Franco was still in power, in 1972, taking advantage of what had been a general relaxation of prohibitions on Catalan and greater permission for it to be used publicly, the group recorded an album of Mallorcan folk in Catalan. Essentially therefore, they were returning to their roots, and after Franco's death they formally dropped the Castilian version of their name and became known only by the Catalan alternative - Els Valldemossa.

Though the group's name was one I was familiar with, I didn't know a great deal about them and I hadn't necessarily been inclined to find out much before coming across a mention of them by chance in an old issue of the "Majorca Daily Bulletin". Next to an article about a familiarisation visit to Mallorca by Harry Goodman and other executives of Sunair Holidays (which had been what I had been interested in) was Irene Taylor's "Majorcan Miscellany" for 26 March, 1969. In this it said that Los Beta and Los Valldemossa were "running neck and neck in the poll to decide Majorca's top entertainers". I don't know which of them ended up winning, but it was enough to spark my curiosity. Who were these groups?

Los or Els Valldemossa became the biggest name among the Mallorcan music acts  and, as mentioned, a version of the group still exists. They are a group with a history which goes beyond achievements, as it is a history which reflects changes in Mallorcan and Spanish society. From folk roots, they became part of the superficial and happy-happy pop music of Spain in the 1960s, the type of music that the Franco regime wanted in order to portray a happy-happy country and to be welcoming to tourists. Their name was in Castilian because it had to be. But as things changed politically, they rediscovered not just their Catalan name but also their Mallorcan-Catalan folk music. They may just have been the most symbolically important music act of the second half of the twentieth century.

Crossing Over: Jazz in Spain

Depending on who you prefer to believe, jazz in Spain has either been in decline for twenty years or has never been so popular. The decline argument is one that forms the background to a current exhibition at Madrid's National Library dedicated to the history of jazz in Spain, and there are two main reasons for believing that there has been and still is a decline: one, an apparent loss of popularity in the early 1990s; two, a current-day problem with funding.

The argument doesn't really stand up, just as an argument which has it that jazz was repressed during the Franco era stands only so much scrutiny. The common belief is that jazz underwent a re-birth after Franco, having been popular prior to the Civil War. This belief requires the view that there was repression under Franco. There was during the earlier years, but so there was for mostly everything. The 1960s brought about significant change, and while Spanish pop music was generally rubbish and had to be happy, happy, touristy pap, jazz was treated with far greater respect. The first international jazz festival in Spain (Barcelona's) started in 1966, coinciding with a time when the world of jazz had edged into an era labelled "contemporary".

There were two fortuitous elements that helped to propel Spanish jazz into the general consciousness, but neither of them was Spanish as such. They were the titles of two recordings: Miles Davis's "Sketches of Spain" in 1960 and Chick Corea's simply entitled "Spain" in 1972. Purely by association and then also by imitation, jazz in Spain underwent a renaissance and Spanish jazz, or rather Spanish and Latin rhythms, were exported and crossed over into the contemporary world of jazz.

What is true is that jazz did enjoy a golden age of popularity in the later 1970s and 1980s, but the sudden explosion of jazz magazines, jazz programmes as well as more festivals (some of which still survive) has to be seen within the context of the cultural release and liberation that occurred in the years immediately after Franco's death. Its popularity was always likely to be difficult to sustain, however, just as it was elsewhere. The emergence of all manner of popular musical genres plus a probably inevitable burst of a bubble, formed in the 1970s by Corea, Herbie Hancock, Weather Report and others and which had helped to shoot jazz to unprecedented levels of worldwide interest, led to a waning in popularity.

What really happened in the 1990s, though, was evidence of the cyclical nature of music and of genres to re-invent themselves and to emerge in different forms. Jazz, partly because it is essentially freer in its form than other styles of music, is able to transform itself. It may not be "jazz", whatever the term really means, but in its ability to cross over and merge with other musical genres, it retains a jazz essence. Purists may not always appreciate this corruption, but fusion has helped to keep jazz popular, and in today's Spain its popularity remains undiminished. The loss of funding, as has been the case in Mallorca for both the Jazz Voyeur and Sa Pobla festivals, doesn't indicate a lack of popularity; it indicates unfortunate realities of economic life and of economies' inabilities to adequately support the arts and culture.

Crossover into flamenco, associated most obviously with Paco de Lucia, gave jazz a specifically Spanish flavour, though flamenco crossover had been attempted earlier, the American vibes player Lionel Hampton having introduced castanets, not exactly successfully, in the late 1950s. The more recent crossover and the subsequent further amalgamation of chill into the flamenco-jazz mix have created a hybrid of Ibizan club music and the tradition of Andalucía, the sound of which is de rigueur for any establishment claiming to offer "chill".

While flamenco has helped to breathe different life into Spanish jazz, other local musical traditions have also crossed over. Catalonian folk music is one such. But for all that jazz is popular in Mallorca, the same crossover hasn't really occurred here. An artist who has given it a go is Onofre Garcías, who on his 2011 album "Migration" took some Mallorcan folk music traditions, collaborated with Mike Oldfield, and ended up sounding not unlike Mike Oldfield.

What hasn't happened, as far as I am aware, is a genuine crossover using Mallorcan folk instruments, the pipes, the flutes, even the weird ximbomba. Yet there is no reason why not. Brazilian crossover jazz took off with the help of native instruments, so why not Mallorcan crossover? Despite the National Library's exhibition suggesting otherwise, jazz does retain its popularity, and a key reason why lies with how it has embraced other musical styles.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.