Basque ethnography at a glance

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:
Out came Hilarión de Bengoa, musician and natural of the city of Durango in the Lordship of Biscay, playing the Prussian march with a drum and a three-hole pipe; a magnificent band of eight bullfighters preceded him, with spades or spiked sticks, and placed themselves close to the bullpen for the arrival of the ninth and tenth bulls; in the midst of which the referred musician, already up on a balcony, performed the malbruk and the Biscayan dance, along with other sounds which folks from Biscay are accustomed to, characteristic of pilgrimages and joyous celebrations in the expressed Lordship.

Memorial literario, instructivo y curioso de la Corte de Madrid [Instructive and curious literary memorial of the Court of Madrid]. Madrid, 1785. BNE [National Library of Spain] Newspaper Archives.

We know from archival records that there was a Hilarión de Bengoa, resident of Durango, who proved his nobility at the General Assemblies of Gipuzkoa in 1783. The alluded nobleman and musician are indeed the same person, or, if not, relatives with the same name, perhaps father and son. And thanks to Juan Garmendia Larrañaga and his excellent article “1788. urtea, ospakizunen inguruko berriak” —in San Juan Jaiak 1996 Tolosa, Tolosa: Tolosa Council, 1996)—, we learn about a document of enormous interest which acknowledges that a certain Hilarión de Bengoa, for sure the musician we care about, was hired in 1788 by the Gipuzkoan city of Tolosa to “walk the streets with a drum and a three-hole pipe, as usual” or “play the fife” on “New Year’s morning” and “Epiphany, Holy Guardian Angel, May Cross, Ascension of the Lord, Corpus and its Octave, St John the Baptist, St Anne and St Ignatius of Loyola festivities”, as well as at carnival.

Having performed for the occasion a musical repertoire as varied as the Prussian march, “malbruk” (that is, the international and cosmopolitan Mambrú), “and the Biscayan dance, along with other sounds which folks from Biscay are accustomed to”, the news on the hiring of the Basque nobleman Hilarión de Bengoa to liven up the bullfight which was celebrated in Madrid’s disappeared bullring (immortalized by Goya, Doré, Manet) on 24 October 1785, provides us with brief but relevant information about the repertoire, mobility, peculiar versatility of the adventurer and very skilful Basque musician, and hybridism which lays always at the heart of any living popular culture.

However, it leaves many questions in the air. How frequently would the Basque musician perform in Madrid and elsewhere? Would he participate in festivities other than bullfight celebrations? How would he balance those trips and the contracts and commitments which bound him to cities in the Basque Country? Would Hilarión de Bengoa come to make a name for himself among popular musicians in Madrid at the time? To what extent would his essentially Bizkaian repertoire be influenced, in those outward expeditions, by repertoires typical of other places? Were there any other musicians who would regularly bring Basque folklore out of its natural domains and take it ever so far in a century like the 18th, when travelling was a very slow and dangerous venture? What kind of reception and integration would that folklore have in Madrid and other locations, where popular Basque music would sound more or less oddly exotic?

The future will hopefully discover more documents and data about the very singular nobleman, musician and traveller from Durango, and other Basques who embarked on similar adventures, and shed light on the foregoing mysteries.

José Manuel Pedrosa – Professor at the University of Alcalá

Previous posts by José Manuel Pedrosa: Deadly clothing (1), Deadly clothing (2), Cartomancy, crime and rural drama, and The thief hanged by a pig.