The little accordion and the dance couplets, or couplets brought to verse, have surrounded me from a very young age. The Sunday “liturgy” when I was still 9 to 10 years old was not at all a bad school. It could not be called anything else than “school”, because it took place after coming home from eleven o’clock’s mass. While I was washing up or preparing lunch, mum would ask me to start playing the accordion. And so the session would begin: one song, and another, and a third one, so nice… And the joy after dipping three or four cookies in mistela, would invite us to play the cassette of the trikitilaris of Bizkaia, and I would dance with mum! (Dancing! I didn’t like it at all). In that environment I met Tomás, who came from Izukitze to Gatika, or an old woman who had her daughter for sale, or Hilario Azkarate, Gallastegi and other pelotaris or handball players, the boys that looked like moles, our cousin Josepa….
Who was going to tell me that soon I would learn to play the accordion and start touring the squares with the artists of that recording! Who was going to tell me that, a few years later, I would dedicate myself for many years to walk through countless streets, corners and festivals with the man who sang and played the tambourine in that old cassette we used to enjoy. I do not think it is too bold to say that Kepa Arrizabalaga is one of the best couplet singer in the Basque Country. It is difficult to surpass the sound of the kitchen of my childhood, to surpass our predecessors, and I think it is essential to recognize and pay tribute, with all my heart, to those who taught us the path to our music and to those who guided us. To them, my most sincere thanks.
In this work, I have tried to go out of the traditional models of the couplets for accordion and to work with very varied rhythms. At the same time, I wanted to look at the traditional accordion melodies from another perspective. I have brought to this project an idea that I had for some time: besides singing couplets, why not singing also the melodic parts? Well, by removing some ornaments and some notes from the melodies… the short dance couplets can be perfectly inserted. Here you are, for example, “Maria Erramonaren atazak” (Maria Ramona’s chores) and “Fruiz”, a fantasy come true!