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Bertsolaritza, The Art of Singing Verse

Oral elements have prevailed in Basque culture, especially in bertsolaritza, the art of singing bertso (verse). Bertsolaris (singers of bertso) usually sing in duos, pick a topic and they sing their verses alternatively. One has to stick to the theme and be as witty and skillful as possible in composing verses. The tunes used are usually with a slow tempo and have long verses, which makes things difficult -- you have to measure everything carefully in your mind and pick the right rhyme. Bertsolaris usually elaborate on topics that are more or less happy or comical, and the fun of it is in saying something witty, hillarious or heavy-going.

Professional bertsolaris perform during festivities, at dinners, taverns, etc. where they sing improvised rhymed verses for the occasion. Young people or the youth groups also engage in bertso improvisations at bars and during festivities and other special occasions. About bertsolari performance, Joseba Zulaika notes:

"A concrete bertso does not stand as an autonomous text but as part of the entire performance, which includes singer and public. The bertso, as any other oral performance, is typically a spontaneous response to a situation, a theme, a problem, a pun, a puzzling proposition. It is a response to the public and to the bertso challenge of another bertsolaria. It is a response that makes sense only within the questioning context that frames it. The public's admiration focuses on the entire performative process rather that on concrete textual bertsoak. As a result, it is the bertsolaria as the carrier of such spontaneous inventive process who becomes the object of admiration; the bertsoak are taken as evidence of his natural "genious" rather than end products in themselves."

Most bertsolaris are men but in recent years women have been joining in and even winning competitions. The bertso strophes quoted here were taken from Joseba Zulaika's book Basque Violence and Methaphor (University of Nevada Press, 1988). They were sang by two well known and gifted bertsolaris, Lasarte and Lopategi, at the 1980 Kopraixak or yearly festivity in Itziar. The theme about which they sang improvised verses was given by Zulaika: bertsolaritza itself.

Picture: Students at a bertso competition in Nabarra. Courtesy of Egin.