WHEN WAS NOW AND THEN?

WHEN WAS NOW AND THEN?

follow sidetracks & detours

between tradition and modernity

with Norman Warwick

I wrote something of a rave review earlier this week about the live performance given by the Spanish folk-lore group Los Labradores. I had seen and heard the group last weekend when they played at the  Mancha Blanca Craft Fair. Not only did they prove themselves to be superb musicians steeped in history and tradition, with the weight of history on one shoulder and the weight of tradition on the other we might have expected each musician to be sombre and serious. That, however, was not the case at all… they delivered booming, soaring and even raucus sounds that meant that the entire audience had a great time. So, I wanted to learn more about them and I would like to share with you what I learned.

The history of the group Los Labradores de Valleseco dates back to the 70s, specifically to 1972, when a group of friends from the Zumacal neighborhood, fans of Canarian music, led by Francisco Pérez Nuez, familiarly known as “Pacuco”, began to meet at night in some old sheds on the La Laguna estate to play and entertain themselves while enjoying Canarian music.

Juan del Pino, Pacuco’s father, occasionally joined those first meetings. He played the bandurria and the guitar, as well as the caracol, something he was good at since he did it to call people together to collect the chochos in the summer.

Los Labradores were very daring from the beginning, since the first thing they faced was the Sabandeña mass, which after a few months of rehearsal they were already performing with ease, which led them to be invited the following year by the parish priest of Valleseco to perform it.

But the official presentation reported in the newspapers took place on the occasion of the Feast of the Incarnation in 1974, in a recital for said festivities, having performed the Canarian mass on that same occasion.

The group was initially made up of about 14 members, which gradually increased until reaching 20 the following year.

The rehearsal place was changing scenery and for a time it had its space in the basement of José Herrera’s house, in the upper part of Monagas and later in the Zumacal girls’ school in order to accompany the dance group that had been created there.

From 1975 onwards, the group had its own character and was invited to perform on almost the entire island of Gran Canaria, also travelling to the islands of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, invited by the Gran Canaria Tourist Board.

They take part in the various pilgrimages of El Pino, accompanying the cart from the municipality of Valleseco, as well as participating in folklore gatherings throughout the length and breadth of the island, such as the one held in the Plaza de Santa Ana, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in those years, in homage to D. Juan Rguez Doreste, mayor of the city, where they shared the stage with the Gofiones, Los Sabandeños and Los Sancochos, each group performing the essential song of the Vegueta bells.

It is worth noting that Los Labradores de Valleseco also participated, as expected, in the programme Tenderete, at the beginning of the 1980s, presented by the late and beloved Nanino Díaz Cutillas.

The group returned to the path of music and got going at the beginning of the 90s, with almost all the members who started with the group in 1972 and with new blood, comprising about 30 people.

Always wanting to highlight the production of traditional Canarian music, respecting the roots, ways and traditions of each of them and also, in 90%, producing songs with their own lyrics and music.

During those years, they appeared on the TVE programme “Taifa y Candil”, presented by the well-known Mr. Manuel Pérez, a native of our municipality of Valleseco, and later on the programme “De Belingo”, on the now defunct Onda Televisión Maspalomas channel, presented by Mr. Antonio Cejudo.

Remember, and in a special way, the most stellar, sad and emotional performance, which was the one held at the Valleseco casino, in tribute to one of its members, exactly Norberto Herrera, this group performing their own song to remember their partner and where they also shared the stage with Los Sabandeños, La Parranda Cuasquias and Los Paperos.

Since April 2010 and on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Zumacal festivities, the group reunited to begin a new musical career, but it was in 2012, when Los Labradores de Valleseco already had a high musical level, began to take the name of their municipality throughout the island of Gran Canaria, performing at the III San Vicente Ferrer Folk Meeting in Valleseco, in August at the mass to the patron saint of folklore, the Virgin of La Cuevita in Artenara, and in September at the novena to the patron saint of the Canary Islands, the Virgen del Pino in Teror.

In 2014, our group commemorated the 40th anniversary since its debut on stage at the La Encarnación and La Manzana festivals in 1974, with an event at the Valleseco Auditorium, featuring the participation of great soloists such as Candelaria González, Virginia Rodríguez, Besay Pérez, all of them from Tenerife, and Pepe Afonso, Pedro Manuel Afonso and Abelardo El Tormento from Gran Canaria.

It should be noted that the musical basis of Los Labradores de Valleseco is, and always will be, traditional Canarian music.

Readers of Sidetracks & Detours will know that we contantly leap the divide between hymns ancient and modern, between traditional and contemporary and between history and modernity.

Like a slick handed magician there are singers and instrumentalists who can show us the old in one hand and then can clap their hands and show us the very young in the other.

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photo book She is just such an artist. I grew up in the same generation as Linda Ronstadt did and I love her rock and roll and country-rock songs and in an early middle age I loved her harmonies with Emmylou and Dolly Parton on the Trio releases. Then there were a couple of soul classic singles with Aaron Neville before she moved into Spanish language recordings, stage musicals and Opera.

She always carried her roots with her and somehow seemed to sew seeds from those roots that blossomed always into beautiful music.

To learn how she did all that, and to learn, too, about the cruel irony with which fate hit her work you should read her autobiographies and even the biographies of her.

They tell of how a musician can advance the immigration and emigration of music, around the globe into and out of the world, overseas to new lands, to new generations. You can follow all the genres of music that mattered so much to her and learn where she took them, where she left them and when she picked them again after genre and time had been so eroded that all music became celebrated and cared for and is nowadays only classified and categorised when it is absolutely essential.