In a nutshell: lovely tunes and songs from Galicia, which is the northwestern corner of Spain sitting on top of Portugal. It has  its own language (one of the co-official languages of Spain, half-way between Portuguese and Spanish), a celtic-related music tradition, and bagpipes (gaita).

Although Mano, who ran this session for the past 5 years, has recently moved away from Oxford, the Galician session will live on. Thanks to his work, we are very lucky to have a unique combination of:

* the very enthusiastic Oxford Pandeireteiras who sing and play percussions and guarantee a dose of Galician authenticity for the sessions;

* a few local folk musicians who attended Mano’s sessions regularly and have by now got their heads round the Galician tunes (and also happen to love them) ;

* a faithful audience thanks to the Oxford Intercambio Spanish Meetup group, where the sessions form one of the many regular activities that meetup members come to.

So we (instrumentalists and pandeireteiras) considered that this would be a good basis to keep the sessions running on the established monthly schedule, even if we are missing one thing, namely a resident gaitero (bagpiper).

While we can play the tunes without gaita, we are hopeful that Galician pipers resident elsewhere in the UK may at least occasionally come round and help us out. Thus, at the second post-Mano session which happened on Aug 30, David Carril from London came over to play his gaita with us.  Any other suggestions or volunteers, please let me know.

contact Michael, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.