ENLIGHT Impact Conference 2023 - TXALAPARTA

Txalaparta Performance:
Apple orchards are a typical scenery in the Basque Country. Most of the fruits are used to make an age-old favourite drink, that is, cider. Whenever the juice was ready to drink, the country home owners would announce it to their neighbours by making a regular, rythmic noise beating sticks on a wooden plank. This soundmaking object was first called TXALAPARTA.
The rural lifestyle has declined throughout the centuries and the use of txalaparta has also evolved: Nowadays, musicians use several boards that offer a range of sonorities and materials have also diversified: from the original alder or chestnut, new wood types have been introduced, as well as tuned minerals, or even in some intercultural festivals, ice bars!!
Txalaparta is a percussion instrument where the leader player sets the basic rythms, while their peer answers, reacts, breaks those initial rythms to start a musical conversation between them both.