{"id":3901,"date":"2026-02-07T10:14:39","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T09:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/?p=3901"},"modified":"2026-02-07T10:16:26","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T09:16:26","slug":"this-is-how-viguelas-visit-to-india-went","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/whats-up-mapamundimusica\/this-is-how-viguelas-visit-to-india-went\/","title":{"rendered":"This is how Vig\u00fcela\u2019s visit to India went"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday we returned from Kolkata after two weeks of travel that took us to three locations in West Bengal, where Vig\u00fcela gave concerts, workshops and made collaborations with local artists. Our participation in the Sur Jahan festival, organiced by Banglanatak dot com<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0was made possible thanks to the support of the\u00a0Embassy of Spain in India<\/strong>. It has been a fascinating adventure, full of contrasts, and we\u2019d like to share a few moments with you:<\/p>\n

FIRST LOCATION: KOLKATA<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Kolkata we gave a concert, a workshop, and rehearsed and presented to the public the collaboration for the \u201cGrand Finale\u201d: a panoramic piece with the participation of all the groups programmed on the bill. Click to watch a snippet of our performance:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the one-hour workshop we had time to explain some key ideas behind our music and a few basic notions of jota dance:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We worked a lot! Here we are with the rest of our colleagues at the end of the rehearsal for the Grand Finale:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But we also had time to enjoy ourselves. Here we are attending the opening ceremony, where our Carmen helped water a plant together with representatives of the other groups, as a symbolic gesture:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SECOND LOCATION: BANNABAGRAM BAUL ASHRAM<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the ashram\u2014an encounter space for baul musicians (a tradition of mystic singers and musicians from Bengal who convey a spiritual and life philosophy through song, poetry and music), located next to a small village in a very rural area\u2014besides our own performance we had the pleasure of preparing and presenting a collaboration with several baul musicians. Click to watch the beginning of the rehearsal and be amazed by how Girish Baul interacts with our\u00a0peretas<\/em>. Below you\u2019ll find some musicological notes about this collaboration:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After briefly listening to Vig\u00fcela developing several stanzas in peretas genre, at this point in the video Girish Baul listens to the peretas prelude and comes in, placing his stanzas from the baul tradition in exactly the right place. How is this possible? We explain it. Peretas and, more generally, many traditional styles have a harmonic code that unfolds over metronomic rhythms, that is, rhythms characterized by a constant regularity of pulse, comparable to the tick-tock of a metronome. This also happens in baul music and in many other musical traditions around the world, as a globally shared principle. On this metronomic basis, and listening to the harmonics of the guitar as it develops the peretas genre, Girish starts singing his melodies, moving them within the pulse, just as he does in his own baul music.<\/p>\n

Later in the day, a musician with a caj\u00f3n was introduced, marking the rhythm from a different concept. This musician tried to identify the \u201crhythms\u201d of baul music and to \u201cguide\u201d the baul musicians to follow that pattern. This caused the baul musicians to have to alter their performance, modifying the places in the melody where they placed the accent in order to try to constrain themselves to what the caj\u00f3n was doing. Girish Baul placed accents in his music in positions that seemed illogical to the caj\u00f3n player from their perspective of meter understood as a pulse divided into closed bars. They seemed illogical because they did not fit into those bars, but the accents Girish used are, for him, completely logical. By trying to force the melody into a meter of closed bars, baul music stopped working in the same way, because a rhythm that is not its own was imposed on it, thus forcing the baul musicians to do something that is not the music according to their tradition. This text has been developed together by me and by Juan Antonio Torres, musical director of Vig\u00fcela.<\/p>\n

The result of the collaboration was presented on stage during the festival programme. Click to watch it:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some of the group slept at the ashram and others at a nearby hostel where monkeys serenaded us every night \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

At the ashram they have a vegetable garden with lots of produce, and there\u2019s a nearby river where they fish. The background image of this email is from the ashram. On all our road trips we also saw shops with live chickens that you can buy and they sell them freshly slaughtered\u2014so fresher is impossible. Here\u2019s a typical dish of what we ate those days: fish or chicken, chapati bread, rice, lentil soup and several vegetable stews. This is the kind of menu we also had at the next location.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

THIRD LOCATION: IIT KHARAGPUR<\/strong><\/p>\n

And the third stop was at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, a university specialized in technology that also pursues the holistic education of students from a humanistic perspective. There we carried out many activities, such as this workshop. We\u2019re sharing a moment here practicing hand clapping with students in some seguidillas sevillanas. Click to watch it:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We also gave our own performance. Here\u2019s a fragment of\u00a0tonada<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0jota<\/em>\u00a0in the style of Candeleda:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We attended the conference by Prof. Dr. Denis Laborde about the festival Haizebegi,\u00a0a cross-border Basque festival that combines vocal traditions and contemporary creation with a clear political commitment to cultural diversity, minority languages and social engagement.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And we once again opened the Grand Finale with a wedding song from Extremadura, in which we collaborated with colleagues from Transylvania, Latvia, Denmark and India:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to condense everything we experienced over these days into one email, but we hope we\u2019ve conveyed a little of our journey. It has been a pleasure and an honour to bring the music of our land once again to faraway latitudes and to see how its beauty and energy win hearts wherever they go.<\/p>\n

Contact me for bookings<\/a>:<\/p>\n


\nVig\u00fcela<\/strong><\/span>
\nCastilla-La Mancha<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Rural Spain, raw voices, timeless power<\/strong><\/p>\n

40 years, 10 albums and the same fire.\u00a0They have performed at top-level festivals and circuits across Europe, Asia and the Americas.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udd38“Interpretive nuances of folk styles that embody emotional depth and cultural storytelling. Their work resonates with audiences of all ages.”\u00a0<\/em>World Music Central, USA<\/p>\n

Their latest album,\u00a0We<\/a><\/em>, included in:\ud83d\udd38the\u00a0Bestenliste\u00a0<\/em>(honor list) of the\u00a0Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik\u00a0<\/em>\ud83d\udd38Top 10 Flamenco and Roots Music Albums by the veteran Spanish music magazine Mondo Sonoro<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udf10\u00a0Web<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0\u23ef\ufe0f\u00a0Video<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0\ud83d\udcf7\u00a0Instagram<\/a><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday we returned from Kolkata after two weeks of travel that took us to three locations in West Bengal, where Vig\u00fcela gave concerts, workshops and made collaborations with local artists. Our participation in the Sur Jahan festival, organiced by Banglanatak dot com\u00a0was made possible thanks to the support of the\u00a0Embassy of Spain in India. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whats-up-mapamundimusica"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3902,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3901\/revisions\/3902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mapamundimusica.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}