Album Notes

“Mbira y pampa” is a combination of Africans traditional music with Argentinean folkloric elements. The songs included in de CD had been composed by Santiago Vazquez, who moved away from the strictly traditions to bring closer to itself the experimental sounds of the instrument, executed from this side of the world.
Mbira is the sacred instrument of the Shona (Zimbabwe) and its tradition has more than over 1000 years of antiquity. Its music is used in rituals called “bira” to summon the spirits of the ancestors. It has a sweet and at the same time impure loudness due to the bottle cap of soda that resonate with the vibration of the instrument.
The music of mbiras usually accompanies with hosho, palms and voices. The traditional repertoire of the instrument consists in around 150 circular pieces, on which the experienced musician is alternating variations - some traditional ones, others of its responsibility and other always improvising within affluent a musical language of defined rules.
The pieces of mbira can last between two minutes to more than one hour. It is in the repetition and by the gradual changes that are generated where it finds the essence of trance in this music.