The last telluric voice of the pre-tourist Balearic Islands

PalmLike an ancient sibyl, 93-year-old Maria Capó Navarro concentrates and begins to sing one of the tunes from her youth, when she worked on the family farm in Sóller. It's her way of evoking a world of connection to the land and precise words that vanished with the boom A tourist attraction in the 1960s. The first person to hear that same tune live 74 years ago was the American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. "In 1952," he says, "he saw me perform at an international folklore competition held in the Palma bullring. I sang with my village group, Los Danzadores del Baile de Oro (The Dancers of the Golden Dance). We were one of the prize winners. Apparently, my family liked it a lot and asked to come. I was the only doll." Capó remembers that visit perfectly. "The sun was blazing, and Lomax arrived hunched over and sweltering. He took out his tape recorder and recorded the moment when my father, my grandfather, and I were singing while we threshed grain on the threshing floor with a sledgehammer. He must not have understood a thing. He only knew a little Spanish."

Born in Austin, Texas, in 1915, Lomax is considered one of the most important song collectors of the 20th century. He learned the trade as a teenager, helping his father, John, who in 1933 was appointed head of the National Archives of American Folk Song at the U.S. Congress. This marked the beginning of a path that would make him a pioneer in using technology to preserve the folk soul of marginalized African Americans from the hustle and bustle of modern life. He would do the same for the voiceless Caribbean. This work would strengthen the Texan's social conscience, which would bring him trouble. In 1950, at the height of the Cold War, his name appeared on a blacklist of professionals who were to be punished by being barred from work. These were the times of the witch hunt against communists led by Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy. Lomax then readily accepted an interesting project from the New York-based record label Columbia Records: to direct a global library of folk music to London. For eight years he would collaborate with the BBC and carry out fieldwork in Europe, especially in Spain and Italy, but also in Ireland and Scotland.

Anti-Francoist

The figure of the Texas folklorist has been studied by Antoni Pizà Prohens, from Felanitx, professor of musicology at New York University and director of the Foundation for Iberian Music in the same city. In 2006 he coordinated the book Alan Lomax. Glimpses (Sa Nostra Foundation), with the photographs the American took during his time in the Balearic Islands. "While in London," he says, "the record company suggested he travel to Spain to study its musical heritage, taking advantage of the fact that Palma was to host an International Congress of Musicology and the Second International Folklore Festival between July 21 and 28, 1952. He reluctantly accepted the proposal, as he was hesitant to visit a country where the Civil War had just ended."

The 37-year-old musicologist embarked on this mission accompanied by the British woman Jeanette Bell, the assistant provided by the BBC. The first stop was Barcelona, ​​where he met with Marius Schneider. He was a Nazi protected by the Franco regime who was in charge of organizing both events in Palma. He did so from his position as director of the Folklore Section of the Spanish Institute of Musicology, based in Barcelona. The meeting was anything but pleasant. This is what the American recorded in his diary: "When I told him about my project, he made it very clear that he would personally ensure that no Spanish musicologist helped me. He also suggested that I leave the country."

Then Lomax made a decisive decision: "I didn't even intend to stay. I only had two tapes to record, and I hadn't done any research into Spanish ethnology. That, however, was my first experience with a Nazi, and so I saw behind the table the music of this ill-fated country, even if I had to dedicate the rest of my life to it. Deep down, I was also delighted by those prospects of adventure in a landscape that reminded me so much of my native Texas."

Fleeing from 'Choirs and Dances'

That hunter of melodies landed in a pre-tourist Mallorca where traditional dances and songs were 'regional manifestations' of Spain's wealth, controlled by the Women's Section of the Falange through the organization Coros y Danzas (Choirs and Dances). During his two visits to Palma, he met such important figures as the eminent Catalan folklorist Joan Amades (1890-1959), who that year published the Catalan Customs, the Chilean ethnomusicologist Pablo Garrido (1905-1982) and the Extremaduran Manuel García Matos (1912-1974), author of A magnificent anthology of the musical folklore of Spain (1960).

The Second International Folklore Festival took place in the Ciudad bullring, which emphasized the 'Spanishness' of the event. "Lomax," says Pizà, "was very disappointed. He immediately realized that this was not the blues "An African American from the Mississippi prisons who had recorded with his father three decades earlier. He wanted to capture the authentic music of the Islands, not the domesticated and sweetened version produced by the Falange." After two days, he was already more than fed up with shawls, puffed trousers, and ritualized dances. "He knew he had to go and find the people in the countryside who endured the prison yard. And he not only wanted to record them but also photograph them with a small portable Leica. He was the first person to arrive in the Islands with a camera like that. In his diaries, he says that most of the islanders are thin and malnourished. At the same time, he highlights their generosity."

At the bullring exhibition, Lomax was captivated by Maria Capó Navarro's powerful voice. He immediately contacted her to arrange a recording of her working on her farm in Sóller. He encountered a 19-year-old girl who wasn't at all intimidated by the sight of a foreigner with a tape recorder and camera. More often than not, people, feeling self-conscious, turned their backs on him. Later, the Texan continued capturing the island's musical pulse in Consell, Oriente, and Valldemossa. He also traveled to Ibiza and Formentera—he didn't have time to go to Menorca. In Mallorca, he fell in love with the sound of the zambomba (a type of friction drum), and in the Pitiusas Islands, with the hypnotic double-time singing. However, the documented repertoire was quite varied: from songs related to agricultural work to melodies to accompany dancing, a fragment of the Song of the Sibyl, and a stanza alluding to the executions carried out by the fascists. The American's next destination was the Iberian Peninsula, where he collected more sounds from the land in Catalonia, the Valencian Community, Aragon, the Basque Country, Asturias, León, Galicia, and Andalusia. The journey would take six months. All of this material would be broadcast in 1953 on a BBC radio program about Spanish music.

"We have lost many things"

Lomax died in 2002, at the age of 87, in Florida (USA). His daughter Anna managed his legacy through the Association for Cultural Equity – the organization's website (www.culturalequity.orgIt contains all the recordings and photographs made by the folklorist. In 2006, Anna visited Capó to present him with the CD. The Spanish Recordings. Majorca with some forty pieces that her father had recorded on the island in 1952. "I was –she says– very happy to be able to hear another peak not only my voice as a young girl, but also that of my father and my godfather."

Like other Mallorcans, the woman from Sóller also succumbed to the siren song of the tourism boom. After working at the Es Molí hotel in Deià, she moved to Palma to help her eldest son in a prepared food business. Today, at 93, she is the only surviving singer in the Balearic Islands—and probably in the entire country—who seven decades ago lent her earthy voice to the Lomax tape recorder. Sitting in her armchair at home, she looks nostalgically at the portrait he took of her. "Mallorca," she says, "has changed a lot since then. Tourism has brought us many good things. However, by abandoning agricultural work, we have lost other important things, such as a rich linguistic and musical heritage. Before, it was unthinkable to work without singing. Now people only look at their phones." And to finish, a wish he makes with a broad smile: "I'd like another researcher like Lomax to come and see me. I'd sing him more songs than I'd like to see lost. They're songs that speak of old settlements like Santa Ponça, now transformed into tourist hotspots." In 2022, Capó already celebrated the pre-tourist island of his youth in the documentary Stone and oil, by Alex Dioscorides, focused on the olive grove culture of the Tramuntana mountain range.