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INTRODUCTION
1.1 Total absence of mass production 1.2. Public participation and the vital importance of feedback 1.3. The nature of live performance in a public area and group participation 1.4. Integrated nature of the audience 1.5. Accessibility of the bertsolari: economic self-sufficiency and modesty 2. What does the bertsolari sing? 3. Achieving a balance amongst the challenges. What are roots for?
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1.1 Total
absence of mass production Mass production
on a grand scale is one of the bases of modern production and the modern
market. Products which in previous historical eras were manufactured in
an individualised way and which were therefore unrepeatable in their exact
form, are today produced on a mass scale. This mass-production affects
the whole gamut of products from a chocolate-flavoured custard to a record
or a pair of trousers. A large part
of the consumption of what we call “culture” is based on these
reproductions. Both the most typical cultural products (books, records,
videos, films) and those other products which operate using the new communications
technology, have, as their basis —at an increasingly global level
and with ever-fewer barriers—, the reproduction of some original
creation and normally produced at a great distance, in a different context,
and at another time. Somewhat
different is the case of the cultural creation which is produced live
before the public. But even in these cultural expressions, in the majority
of cases there is still a certain degree of reproduction. While a live
song never sounds exactly the same as on its previous airing, this does
not stop it from being the umpteenth reproduction of a piece created at
another time. The same thing happens in stage art and other cultural expressions. Bertsolaritza
is —and herein lie both its value and its limitations— one of
the rare cultural expressions before the public which is not based on
any form of mass production. A bertsolari’s performance stands out
on its own precisely for not reproducing any previously produced ad
hoc creation: at its core are improvisation and the total originality
of every time and place. The creation in bertsolaritza is unrepeatable:
it is the capacity for mental poise and the ability to create in response
to a fleeting moment that which stamps character on this creation. It
is in that inexorable fleetingness, in that recess of the improviser’s
mind that the bertso acquires sense and meaning, where is discovered the
banality of the straw and the sublimity of the grain. |