The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #26307   Message #323409
Posted By: GeorgeH
20-Oct-00 - 01:38 PM
Thread Name: AUSTURIAN CHALLENGE
Subject: RE: AUSTURIAN CHALLENGE
OK, I was wrong (as others have indicated) . . my checks of a couple of Spanish music sites showed (as far as my limited Spanish could tell) no reference to an Asturian Language . .

However I was clearly looking in the wrong place, and should have started with our CD collection. So, in answer to the original question, may I recommend:

"Xuaca Amieva" by Xostrando, released by Fono Astur FA_CD 8715.

It's pretty good, too. A lot of Asturian bagpipe, especially in the earlier tracks . . various other instruments and some pretty fair singing. Not as instantly appealing as some Iberian recordings, but we enjoy it very much. (We'd not noticed it was Asturian, so the style isn't CLEARLY distinct from other Iberian traditions.)

At least three of the tunes/songs feature on other CDs we have (mainly Galician I'd guess) and another tune is described as being commonly found throughout the peninsula. Oh, and there's a couple of pretty ordinary Irish/Scots tracks at the end - but it is a 28 track CD.

As for the language (the CD sleeve is tri-lingual) - I'd guess the main one is Bable; the other two are English and Spanish. So - the language is clearly Latinate (?) with various similarities to both French and Spanish. However my wife (whose Spanish, unlike mine, is "workable") says it's not really intelligible, so I guess it's more than a dialect.

Are the Celtic languages regarded as Latinate, BTW? They don't appear so to me!

G.