the hum / By Bob Doran

Galician Lark Song

Bagpipes at the Grange, plus Arts Alive! action and Deadwood Revival

(Aug. 5, 2010)  For 30 years now the Lark in the Morning World Music and Dance Celebration, better known simply as Lark Camp, has drawn traditional musicians from around the world to Mendocino Woodlands State Park for a week of workshops and jam sessions with an international scope. A fair number of local musicians attend every year — some go to learn from the masters, some go to teach, some do both. Everyone goes to play.

There are actually three camps within Lark Camp, one with a focus on Ireland and the British Isles, Eastern Europe, Greece and Sweden, another centered on Middle Eastern and African music and drumming, a third on swing music, the Americas, Spain and France. It’s hard to say, and I admit I’m not sure, but the third camp may be where you’ll find the Galician musicians, since Galicia is a province in the northwest corner of Spain, but perhaps not since there’s a strong Celtic influence in their music.

Meadow Lark

GALLERY >

Gregg Moore spent many years overseas studying and playing music, working out arrangements of tunes from all over. We know him mostly for his leadership of the wildly international Bandemonium, but he’s also into Galician music.   

In an e-mail ominously titled “There WILL be bagpipes” Moore writes, “Two years ago Bandemonium hosted the duo VerdeGaio from Galicia and we played some of the settings of traditional Galician bagpipe (gaita) tunes I write for the group of gaitas at Lark Camp each year. Then a month or so ago the Bayside [Grange] Music Project hosted an evening with a younger group of Americans, Irish and Galicians, As Faiscas, exploring the directions traditional Galician music can take mixed with general Celtic sensibilities — we were captivated by the voices of Sinead and Diana. The evening was worthwhile if only for the introduction of their traditional way of playing pandereta (tambourine).”

Moore included a link to his website (relevantmusic.org) where he’s posted a couple of songs, “Pateado” by As Faiscas (which sounds totally Celtic to my ear) and the sprightly bagpipe tune “Danza de Paus de Taboexa” by VerdeGaio, who sound something like Highland pipers but with an insistent driving Latin rhythm. That band includes two Spaniards, Alexandre Cadarso and Javier Blanco, along with Oregon-based piper Kevin Carr, who you may have heard playing with one of his other bands, Wake the Dead, a Celtic G-Dead tribute (that band plays Dead on the Creek over the weekend at Uncle John’s Camp above Willits).

After Lark Camp ends Saturday, Moore is bringing VerdeGaio and As Faiscas to play a Sunday show at Bayside Grange (in the kitchen), a special concert with music, dancing and stories. Yes, there will be bagpipes, along with mandolins, button accordions and what Moore describes as “other exotic string and wind instruments.”

Got a note from DJ Red saying, “I will be playing for the first time under my alter ego, DJ CheasyListening, at The Lobby [in the Vance] for August’s Arts Alive! — I didn’t put that exclamation point there, Arts Alive! did. I would never assume any of my gigs would be so exciting as to warrant an ‘!’ at the end of a sentence telling you about them — but I’m babbling. DJ Cheasy Listening will be culling from his collection of swing, exotica, ’60s and ’70s Latin jazz, and other assorted oddballs of musical curio to keep the hipster crowd swinging and schmoozing from 6 ’til 9. Then, at 9:45ish, he turns back into plain old DJ Red, who will be spinning deep and funky house until midnight.”

Elsewhere in Eureka’s Saturday night Arts Alive! world: ShinBone plays rhythm ’n’ blues at the “historic” Eureka Theater, just the thing for your post Buddy Brown Fest blues pleasure (more on the BB Blues Festival in the Calendar section). Synapsis presents Circus of the Sacred Search at the Adorni, an Ink People-related art installation with performance components. Kid Telex and altONE host an open mic at Oasis Lounge followed by late-night dubstep. Also slightly later (8 p.m.) an all-star funk night at the Red Fox with Chris Wixson‘s Speak Easy Saints as hosts plus live art and BBQ.

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