AMANCIO PRADA, vocals y guitarra

EDUARDO GATTINONI, cello

Recorded at Kirios (Madrid),  March, 1975

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Remembrances of Rosalía de Castro

This album was recorded in March of 1975, in the Kirios recording studios of Madrid, with the accompaniment of Eduardo Gattinoni on the cello. The recording was completed in two or three sessions. My first LP Vida e Morte (Life and Death), recorded in Paris a year before, already included two songs with lyrics by Rosalía: Cómo chove miudiño (How it Slowly Rains) and Un repoludo gaiteiro (A Strong Bagpiper). These were my first compositions, written whilst studying at Valladolid, in 1968. It was then, aged nineteen, that I came to know the poetry of Rosalía de Castro: living in Castile for the first time in my life I longed, through her verses, for the earth and air of home, airiños aires... Almost without noticing, I began to inwardly hear and sing the music of those verses. It was like having to get it off my chest. I did not even intend, at the time, to write any songs: I merely sang that which I heard when the wind took me afar and made me forget about myself. In the summer of 69 I was invited to perform in the "Festival de la Juventud" (Youth Festival) of Alar del Rey (Palencia). I sang Pra Habana (For Habana), with a borrowed guitar. To my surprise, I was awarded first prize and some money with which I bought my first guitar. I left for Paris. I was twenty. There, besides other studies and loves, I continued to read and think about Rosalía...and developed the idea of gathering enough material for a monograph record dedicated to the poet. In Follas Novas (New Leaves) I encountered a different type of poem, in which Rosalía expressed herself as a romantic poet without emphasising her Galician nature or referring to any specific geographical location. These intimate poems, it seems to me, are tinged by a certain existentialist ethos, especially so in her last book En las orillas del Sar (By the Banks of the Sar).
Rosalía de Castro is one of those rare poets who has had the good fortune of transcending herself, "anque en verdade, ¿qué lle pasará a ún que non sea como se pasase en todol-os demáis? (Although, in reality, what can happen to one which doesn´t at the same time appear to happen to everyone else?)" In other words, the people have made her poetry their own, in the same way that Rosalía had appropriated the verses of popular folksongs and used them as a point of departure and source of inspiration. A process of reciprocal influence, similar to that which, not so long ago, shaped music and the popular anonymous song...I would dearly wish something similar would happen to these songs: that people would sing them without knowing or remembering who sang them originally. But this favour is granted only by fate and luck. Such as the occasion when a group of friends, students and teachers at the University of Vigo visited the Island of San Simon to pay homage to the troubadour Mendiño: when I started to sing Adiós ríos, adiós fontes (Goodbye rivers, goodbye fountains) and everyone joined in with the singing, an unforgettable emotion pervaded us all...I felt that, fortunately, that song did not belong to me anymore.

Ten years later, I included in the record Dulce vino de olvido (Sweet Wine of Oblivion) a version of the famous Negra sombra (Black Shadow) and, more recently, in Trovadores, Místicos y Románticos (Troubadours, Mystics and Romantics) (1990), my latest composition inspired by the poet, Mayo longo (Long May).

It is possible that some day I will resolve to record all of them again and include also some new material, because I believe that many sleeping songs remain in Rosalía de Castro´s poetry, merely awaiting the hand of snow...God willing.

Amancio Prada, 1994