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The tabor drum and flute player

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Posted on 2021-11-12 in
Txistulariak Bermeoko madalenatan, 2013.

Txistu players in Bermeo (Bizkaia), 2013.

The use of a hewn pipe seems to date back to prehistoric times, but it would be in the Middle Ages when a musical revolution occurred and when the melodic combination of the three-holed fipple flute and the rhythm of the tabor drum by the same player (jesters and minstrels) would develop and spread throughout Western Europe (Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and even be taken to The Americas). In the 16th century, the jesters and minstrels taught courtly dances and livened up tournaments or the social events of the nobility.  Those unwonted scenes inspired the popular classes to adopt that figure in their civil and religious celebrations, festivities, processions, pilgrimages, ceremonies where the entertainment was provided by peddlers. Paradoxically, there were all known by the same widely used name of “taborers” (danbolin). In around the 18th century, given their musical development and evolution in courtly and plebeian settings, a bitter struggle broke out between those who could and those who could not read music (in their search for fame and fortune from their performances).

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Hilarión de Bengoa, a Basque musician in Madrid

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Posted on 2020-10-23 in

José Arrue. Digitized postcard. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

The Memorial literario, instructivo y curioso de la Corte de Madrid [Instructive and curious literary memorial of the Court of Madrid] was a magazine (fortnightly at first and monthly later) published from January 1784 to December 1790, when the government suppressed it, same as almost all other main Spanish press publications, in order to prevent the flourishing French Revolution from spreading to the south of the Pyrenees.

The chronicle “Una fiesta de toros [A Bullfight]” which appeared in the October 1785 issue, and which reported on bullfights taking place “on the 3rd, 7th, 17th and 24th of the month in the Ring located outside the Door of Alcalá” (Madrid’s main bullring since 1749 until its demolition in 1874) includes this passage, concerning the 24 October fight:
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