BIZITZA EDERRA DA
Words and music: Olatz Zugasti
Once again do I hear
your fondling words
which, by way of a spell seek to have me bewitched.
Life is precious
let me trudge the path
to the source of my pains all by myself
Nature has taught me
to tend the person I am, as each and every aim lives in one’s own stance
BAKEAN ALA OTZANDUA
Music and Words: Olatz Zugasti
Just like the water slides down the windows, so do the dreams in your mind.
You crack a smile
in front of the mirror
while you put red lipstick on so the people can say
that you really look like a dolly
You come to me wailing and weeping, but what’s the purpose of it all
if you’re bound to disguise
your wounds again tomorrow?
Walking through bustling, crowded streets, the playground of oppressors,
pretending to go unnoticed,
are you at peace ....... or tamed?
When you are wont to take shelter
in the outside, the idle talk and appearances, when you just utter the flattering words
that will tickle the others’ vanity,
isn’t it clear enough
that you are anything but free....?
KONDAIRA
Music and words: Olatz Zugasti
You often talk about our history,
I wonder if you have learned to read the present. Have you perchance regained the flair you need for homecoming?
Apart from monuments, language and more things a country can boast, what is history without the present ....?
We often get moved at rituals,
while we ask for permission to be ourselves. Do they let us steer our own boat,
heedful of the dangers looming ahead?
UR GOIENA, UR BARRENA
Words and music: Traditional
On freezing, snow-capped, long winter nights,
while all others sleep snugly in their beds, we, poor us, go barefoot
May peace enter this house bringing forth wealth peace and wealth, well-being and health
Arantzazu, how do you fare? In Upstream-, downstream water, upstream-, downstream water. New Year will make us better
The lord of this house has a bag brimming with riches a bag brimming with riches and a silver sword
Good pasture grows in our garden, spilling a pleasant scent high up is the moon, and in the middle there is a marigold.
This is an old tune gathered in Urdiain (Navarre) and included in a song compilation by RM. Azkue. It is sung along by the local youth on New Year ́s Eve, as a welcome carol to the New Year.
It is believed that it was an ancestral ritual performed around the water as a purifying and healing element. The lyrics portray really beautiful imagery of nature and wintertime at its best in this bucolic land of the Basque Country.
AGUR ETA OHORE
Words: Olatz Zugasti
Music: Traditional./Brendan Graham
As the seagull skims over the waters it lets out its melodies
we warmly want to thank you who accompany us here today
Please take home with you
a memento of what we are regards and blessings to you and be welcome to our shore
A song based on an Irish tune (“The Fair Fair Land” see below*) on which Brendan Graham wrote the original lyrics. Olatz wrote the words in Basque language and released it in 2014 in Orio for the Kilometroak Big Party organized by the Ikastola (Basque School) in Orio (a seaside town in Gipuzkoa). The lyrics bid welcome to all the people who attended the event. Welcome to our shore. ”Agur eta Ohore” means: Best Regards and Blessings to you.
*The Fair, Fair Land was commissioned by RTE – Ireland’s national broadcaster – as the anthem for RTE Radio1’s Big Music Week, 2013 . Graham describes it as ‘A love song to Ireland, coming out of difficult times’.
First recorded as a single for Children’s Charity, Barnardos by The BIG MUSIC WEEK ENSEMBLE – Celine Byrne, Cathy Jordan, Nono Madolo, Eimear Quinn and the RTE Concert Orchestra, the Fair, Fair Land also featured on the EBU’s Tune In – The Music of Europe.
BIZITZAREN BAITATIK
Words: Pako Aristi Music: Olatz Zugasti
When the clock hands became a nightmare meant to measure our boredom,
we ran away,
so far away that we came across our own being.
There it was, crestfallen, in an identity mask, before the looking-glasses
that multiplied our anxiety for mystery.
No god ever chose us, we did not have to go begging for their compassion.
It’s not life that passes by,
It’s us that go through life
Without triggering the slightest spasm in eternity
In our search for the day on which we forgot that, in our nothingness, We are the universe.
SENA
Words and Music: Olatz Zugasti
I like to walk all by myself along the infinite path
and, on looking around,
to know for certain that
wherever I go, you’ll be there,
to feel that my spirit gets stronger with every step I take.
I’ll light upon rivers and mountains, big cities with harbours,
but it’s you, who walk along with me, that heartens me,
even when the light goes dim....
While you stay with me,
what can cause my instinct to get befuddled, not to see the snares at the crossroads.
You blossom just like a rose in the morning in each bit of stillness
amid the clatter and uproar
There is no moment or place
that I did not get to know,
no solid universal principle
that did not stem from my own self going hand in hand with you, beyond all conventions
JOKO ARAUAN
Words and Music: Olatz Zugasti
Every little affront
is just a part of a more relentless affront,
as there is no way one can confront those one by one or make a getaway.
Both when speaking a foreign language and even if it’s your own
little can be done bearing in mind
that the rules of the game
were set up by strangers.
When you feel that your surroundings are hostile and you ask yourself: what can I do?
don’t expect to get any answer
until you leave aside the little affronts
and concentrate on the main affront
You may be prone to kindle some hope
that we will eventually achieve a victory
what difference is there
between the rules of the game and the affront?
When you are beguiled to talk about rights, or about sirens songs
just turn round, take to the road,
and enjoy our beautiful landscapes
BAT, BIGA, HIRUR...
Words and Music: Olatz Zugasti
Beautiful words had been spread in the air, like polluting fumes
that swaddle the minds
in a dangerous comfort.
Holders of purported plurality gurus pretending equality, they only utter hollow words in a debate lost beforehand
Beautiful, empty words that by dint of recurrence will have us confined
in a cloud of vain hope
One, two, three, four, five .... fighting for the most pompous term;
in a happy-go-lucky party of alleged plurality, surrounded by a high and low fence.
Empty words, a sham of universality,
meaning so little and so much at the same time; words that influential thinkers
put in the lips of the people
words that will open the gates of the last refuge.
MEZULARIA
Music: Brendan Graham Words: Olatz Zugasti
It was the Night that prompted someone
to pick up that tune in writing
which has reached me as a message from you
You become a dream,
an eaglet’s flight
painting my blank canvas with the flow of life.
You have left a clean trail in me, you, a harbinger that drifts away gliding over the waves.
I hear say that you hold the seed of Wholeness,
that the Stars, the South and the Midday all dwell in you.
NI GATIBU HARTZEKO
Music: Traditional/Olatz Zugasti Words: Olatz Zugasti
There is many a way
to keep me captive
many a weapon
to force my surrender
fire weapons or word weapons
yet denial is the most powerful of them all.
There is many a way
to keep me captive
many a weapon
to force my surrender
fire weapons or word weapons, yet whichever road I choose among the ones you offer me, my eyes will go blind
and my perception will be my only way out
ISILPEKO ATEA
Music and words: Olatz Zugasti
You turned up like an elfin
before my eyes that didn’t expect anything,
And now you are a gift that has been snatched away from me, the recollection of an unfulfilled desire.
I imagined a secret door
for our passion to get through and for us to speak the truth, safe from the norms
that do not concur with us
Let me now bid farewell
to each kiss that we spared,
let me now bid farewell to what was and what could have been
and to everything that passes by
We would have sat by the fireplace haunted by our old lore and songs Only to realise how hard it is
to make history looking back at the past.