Música de Ministrers

In the early 80s people around the country, worried about the imminent loss of our traditions, started to reconstruct, recover and, if needed, reinvent the festive calendar of the year and life cycle, with a language we wanted to perceive as our own. The authors of the book and all the musicians in the Ministrers de la Vila Nova worked with dedication. The first time we neophytes could listen to the colours and textures of such a well balanced ensemble, I think it broadened our minds and the thought of how things could be done.

Traditional music, instruments and musicians are well alive now, some thirty years after that beginning. Why so? Undoubtedly because they have always been, are, and will continue to be useful; that is, traditional music carries an implicit function which the seasoned musician knows and masters. Without it, music then becomes only a simple concert or ball, which is no small thing!

This selection, brought to us in the Calaix de Solfa collection, has the great virtue of having been empirically seasoned through streets and squares, following authorities, dancers, gegants and bestiari. It is thus a repertoire which thoroughly accomplishes many of the functionalities of this our music and which, be it old or new, still sends a shiver down our spine.