Listen:
Banangoa
Neure laztanak
Egun zuri I

Joseba Tapia (diatonic accordion and vocals) and Xabier Bersaluze 'Leturia' (pandero - tambourine) are among the most repsected musicians playing Basque music today. With a backing ensemble of voices, mandolin, guitars and foot-stomping percussion, they present a series of folk stories and dances collected from the oral tradition and passed on for generations. This is the sound of Euskal Herria.

Diatonic accordion - Joseba Tapia
Percussion - Xabier Berasaluze "Leturia".
Guitars - Bixente Martinez, Mixel Ducau.
Mandolin - Bixente Martinez.
Voices - Joseba Tapia, Xabier Amuriza, Leturia, Natxo de Felipe, Amaia Zubiria, Igor Elortza, Mentxu Alkorta, Leire Bilbao, Mikel Markez.

"[Tapia is] one of the most innovative trikitilari [accordion players]... He plays with style and syncopated kick.” - fRoots "They played very traditional Basque dance tunes that are heard at parties, including a lot of fandangos, with Joseba Tapia on the diatonic button accordion and voice accompanied by Xabier Leturia, a tambourine virtuoso. ... Besides single tambourine shots, he would glide the tip of his middle finger along the skin to produce a roll. He would also, somehow, dampen the rings to turn it into an ordinary hand drum.... His brother, Tapia, was no slouch on the accordion, either. The music was highly rhythmic and very fun, which is why the Basques in the audience rushed up to the dance floor as soon as they began playing and danced the circular fandango, full of jumping, turning and snapping fingers." - from a concert review in E-Peak Magazine (read the entire article)

Official Bio:
Joseba Tapia and Xabier Leturia modernized 'trikitixa', taking it out of the 'romerías' (country dances) and putting it into the bars, town and city squares, and above all bringing it to the young. Since then many new groups have followed in their footsteps. Tapia and Leturia are a musical partnership capable of producing surprises at any moment. In the albums recorded with their group we can find astonishing combinations of rhythms uninhibited by musical preconceptions (rock, pop, trash, Arab music and rap). On the other hand, when working alone they stick closely to the roots of the tradition. They have played at numerous international folk festivals.

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More from the record label's press info:

Recorded and mixed by Jean Phocas at the Elkarlanean studios during the autumn of 1999.

All peoples and cultures with any amount of tradition and antiquity have accumulated a wide and varying collection of songs, a repertory reflecting the life of their inhabitants. Spreading the social, political or natural events of its closest surroundings, the popular copla or folksong has often functioned as a means of communication, although its original and ultimate objective was to enliven the public square, to encourage fun and dance, to act as a way of helping people to forget the miseries and hardships of everyday life.

BIZKAIKO KOPLA ZAHARRAK is a collection of beautiful and ancient popular songs, put together by different folklore specialists from the late 19th to the early 20th century, and which have been especially chosen by Xabier Amuriza for this record. Xabier Amuriza was born in 1941 in Etxano (Bizkaia). This writer, journalist and bertsolari (a creator and singer of Basque verses, or bertsos*) produces a heterogeneous, emotional and cultivated work of popular, pure and ironical style.

Joseba Tapia, musician and trikitixa accordion player, an expert in all sorts of musical fields, was born in Lasarte in 1964. His long and varied career has been strongly inspired by his outstanding knowledge of traditional music. In 1984, he started playing with Xabier Berasaluze "Leturia" (Billabona, 1954), thus forming a duo responsible for some of the most important pages in the history of the contemporary trikitixa (Basque music played with the tambourine and the accordion).

*Bertos and the trikitixa can be described as the two sides of a same coin, two complementary elements of the Basque folkloric expression, since these folksongs are always passed on through song. Amuriza, Tapia and Leturia, for their part, act as the promoters of this cultural wealth.

One bard from Bizkaia and two musicians from Gipuzkoa, drawn together by a love of both their language and of this artistic expression. This record, entitled BIZKAIKO KOPLA ZAHARRAK, offers songs that are tender and delicate at times, mischievous and ironical at others, always brilliant and elegant, always full of beauty. At the end of the day, these verses are a reflection of the Basque life, customs and traditional way of thinking, the living memory of a people, an emphatic espousal of the continuance and future of an entire nation.