Music stands for one of the most important demonstrations of the traditional culture in the region of Ferrol. Along with the History, a great number of performers and groups have transmitted and preserved the musical repertoire as signs of identity more featured in the popular Folklore. In Galicia we keep instruments and forms inherited from the Middle Ages. Now we have added new pieces that have increased our musical and iconographic heritage. Some instruments are combined in different groups, from individual performances to sets as quartets, pandereteiras groups and the modern pipe bands.
Among the Wind Instruments, we can listen to old examples as the Gaita (Bagpipe), whose origins are uncertain (Mesopotamy possibly). History tells about bagpipes used in Greece and Rome and later in Celtic countries, but we can find this instrument in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. In Galicia, this instrument has been used in individual performances. Pipe groups are a relatively recent development in our country. The tuning and the timbre depend on the pallet (reed, whose material is cane). The pallón (drone reed) gives the bagpipes their characteristic pedal note, which sounds two octaves below the chanter tonic. The Ronquilla or Ronqueta and the Chillón also sound by means of a pallón, although the latter may use a pallet and thus sound a fifth higher. About the fol (bag), the temperament of the bagpipe depends on it, allowing us to get a correct tuning and playing.
In Ferrol, we have an important luthier, Anton Varela, who makes bagpipes. The Japanese Mikiko Watanabe came to Ferrol and studied with him. He is a composer too.
We can find more types of Woodwinds in Galicia. The most important are the Requinta, whose origins may be found in the ancient flutes made out of bone or elder woods (it was probably an instrument for individual recreation, and then for ensembles), the Pito (it belongs to the group of fipple flutes) and the Birimbao (Mouth harp). The last consists of a vibrating wooden of iron strip one of whose ends is fastened to a frame made of the same material. To play it, one hand must hold the instrument between the teeth while the other hand plucks the free end of the strip. The mouth cavity serves as resonance box.
People in Galicia used several everyday objects as percussion instrument: bones, shells, wooden pieces and their own hands. There is a great variety of instruments of different shapes and materials in Galicia. All of them are intended to provide a rhythmical accompaniment for pipe tunes and traditional songs and dances. The Pandeiro is a wooden frame covered with two skins and furnished with small bells inside. There are several ways to play it: hunging from the neck or from the hands by means of straps for the thumbs; it can alternately be tied to the waist or cover the chest, held by both arms. Nowadays it is mainly useful for accompanying singing in the pandeirada dance. The “Pandeira” or round pandeiro, similar to the pandereta, differs in the fact that it has no moving metal discs. The Tamboril (Tambourine) was mostly played by women, in traditional groups of pandereteiras. There are also tambourines called “Ferreñas”. The Bombo (Bass drum) or “Milagriño” is used with the pipe groups. The Tarrañolas, texoletas or castañetas, a set of two independent, rectangular pieces of wood with resting points for the fingers, were also employed in cultivated music. The Cunchas consist of two scallop shells which are beaten or rubbed together to produce the sound. The Charrasco is a long wooden mast whose upper part is fitted with a frame with several rows of metal discs which sound when beaten with a stick. The base of the mast is beaten upon the ground at the same time, stressing the beat.
One of the most significant instruments in Galician traditional musical is the Organistrum-zanfona (Hurdy-gurdy). About this instrument, we can admire one of its most relevant examples in the representation in the Pórtico de La Gloria of the Santiago Cathedral (we know iconographic testimonies from the 12th and 13 centuries, when it was used for polyphony). We may associate the zanfona with the organistrum. Its size is reduced, making it playable by only one musician. This instrument, the Sinfonía is the direct precursor of the hurdy-gurdy, which was the instrument of choice of the troubadours of the Galaico-Portuguese lyrical school. In the 20th century, began a period of recovery of this instrument. Every year, a lot of students learn to play this instrument in Narón, near Ferrol, and we can listen to the most famous players’s performances here. The school of Narón is one of the most remarkable. The hurdy-gurdy (instrument of strings scraped by a wheel), the player grabs the crank with one hand and, grinding it, makes the wheel to spin. This wheel scrapes the strings, producing the sound. The instrument has five strings of gut and metal braided gut.
Galicia being a region of deep musical traditions, it is not hard to find many cities and small villages which maintain musical groups that perform many compositions, most of them of unknown authorship. We also must remember the choral masses, which took on the task of dignifying popular singing while spreading those compositions through the years. About this labour, we can foreground players as the gaiteiro Constantino Bellón and sets as Raparigos de Ferrol, Airiños de Fene, Alxibeira de Narón, the Real Coro Toxos e Flores de Ferrol, Xente Nova and Agarimo de Catabois. A great number of our students are members of these groups.
In Galicia there are a great number of traditional dances. The most typical forms are: Muiñeira (Vella e Nova), Jota (with a large number of variants as Maneo, Fandango, etc.), Children’s Dances (De roda, Baile de regueifa, etc.), Dances of Wedding, Religious Dances, etc. They are classified by the religious calendar and the annual calendar, the musical and versification structure, the usage, etc.
Alalás, Alboradas, Folíadas, Regueifas, Cantos de desafío and Cantos de pandero are some of the chants of the traditional repertoire in Galicia. The most traditional musical forms for Christmas are called Panxoliñas o Cantos de Nadal (Villancicos in Spanish), carols with popular lyrics. There are three different forms: Panxoliñas, for Christmas, Manueles or Manueis, Aninovos or Xaneiros for New Year and Cantos de Reis, for Epifany. Some of these songs have dances (Danzas de Aninovo and Danzas de Reis). Tradition was people, singing and dancing, go to different houses in the parish. They are dances of fixed structure, with community or individual forms (muiñeiras, jotas or danzas do agarradiño).
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