INTRODUCTION
I. SOCIOCULTURAL REALITY AND
PRESENT-DAY BERTSOLARITZA
III. THE PROCESS OF CREATING IMPROVISED
BERTSOS
2. Principal strategy in the construction of the improvised bertso
2.1. General strategy: the sting in the tail
2.2. Practical example-1: "the dilemna of designer drugs"
3. The soul of bertsolaritza-improvised oral confrontation
2 Principal
strategy in the construction of the improvised bertso
The sung
bertso lasts for approximately 20 seconds (kopla) or one minute
(bederatzi puntukoa), which can always vary somewhat, depending on the
bertsolari.
Thus, for
both the transmitter and the recipient, these are small doses of discourse
in time. Both identify the bertso as the unit of discourse. In other words,
in each bertso of approximately 40 seconds, the transmitter has to be
able to create a text which is self-sufficient and which manages to connect
with the heart and soul of the recipient with its grace, its depth, its
brilliant dialectic deduction, and so on.
The principal
way the bertsolari carries out his art is through the mode of improvised
oral confrontation, the verbal duel with another. One defends their role
or their person with their own arguments and tries to rebut those of the
opponent. In strict turn, they interchange a set of three, four, six or
ten bertsos in order to achieve a more plausible argument than the opponent.
Each bertso, nevertheless, stands on its own as a complete discursive
unit.
When the bertsolari sings alone on such-and such a theme, the same happens. If the artist sings three bertsos, for example, it is important to maintain the common thread of the discourse in such a way that one bertso does not contradict the content of the previous one. Even so, it is the individual bertso that has to be perceived by both creator and the listener as the principal discursive unit.
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| Photo: E. Koch / Source: Bertsolari aldizkaria |