Bagpipes in Concert code: TR040205 It contains mostly Galician folkloric compositions, as well as music from other Celtic culture nations, performed by Banda de Gaitas Ciudad de Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires Bagpipes Band). repertoire

Galicia is in the northwestern tip of the Iberian peninsula. It is a country with many deep valleys and mountains, a humid climate and splendid forests with an abundance of wild boars and wolves. Its Atlantic littoral coasts are full of rias (estuaries) with high cliffs and plentiful fish and shellfish. Its rich mining fields have been exploited since old, leading to the development of an intensive metallurgy with varied applications.

There is little information about the peoples who inhabited this region in the far ages. Celts may have arrived around the 6th Century B.C., introducing a civilization which in an attenuated form still exists to this day. The Romans began their invasion of Galicia in 138 B.C. and in 60 B.C. Julius Caesar disembarked in Coruña (Brigantium), but it wasn't until the time of Octavius Augustus in 22 B.C. that the domination of the country was completed, marking the beginning of Roman control that lasted four centuries. During the Roman domination of the Iberian peninsula, Gallaecia was one of the provinces of Hispania, that comprised the territories of Galicia -from which its name stems- part of Leon and Asturias and North of Portugal. Roman influence contributed to the transformation of what was a society of shepherds into an agricultural one, and promoted a great commercial and economic diversification.

In Galicia's ethnic origins there is a predominantly Celtic core, with contributions from other races and cultures, such as Roman, Greek and Phoenician, Carthaginians and Suevi. In 425 A.D. the Suevi built the capital of their kingdom in Braga, and blended with the Galician. This helped them escape the control of the Roman Empire, which was already in its decline. Galicia's Sueve kingdom lasted some 170 years. It could not resist the onslaught of the Goths and Galicia lost its independence. In the year 711 the Arabs invaded Spain and in 714 they conquered Lugo, from which they were expelled 40 years later. Also as from the 7th Century, there began to be Norman raids that looted the Galician coasts and villages. These raids continued during many centuries, as was also the case of Muslim attacks.

In the 9th Century, the remains of Jacob or Santiago, one of Jesus Christ's Apostles, were discovered in Compostela. This finding generated an extraordinary religious fervor in Europe, and attracted thousands of pilgrims from everywhere. Santiago de Compostela became one of the holy cities of Christendom, third in importance after Jerusalem and Rome, and a sort of anti-Mecca in the struggle against the Muslim.

Although the kingdom of Galicia persisted as a historical entity for over 10 centuries, it was an independent kingdom only during some periods. Towards the 15th Century, the pilgrimages to Santiago had a marked decline. When Donna Isabel and Donna Juana were disputing the throne of Castile, most of the Galician noblemen took the part of the latter, that is, they supported Portugal. In 1474, Donna Isabel was proclaimed Queen of Castile. It is during the period of her rule together with her husband, Fernando of Aragon -called the Spanish Catholic King and Queen- that America was discovered and Spain was fully reconquered from the Moors. The king and queen exacted a high price from the Galicians, repressing several peasant uprisings and banning all those nobles who had been against them, thus depriving the country of a large share of its leading class and annexing it by force, starting a process of authoritarian rule that, with nuances, lasted until the last decades of the 20th Century.

The last third of the 19th Century saw the beginning of a literary movement in Galicia -the Rexurdimiento (Rebirth)- that first acquired a regionalist tone and later one of asserting their nationality, creating the foundations for the resurrection of its own language, a legacy of Roman Latin, with the creation in 1916 of the Irmandades da Fala (Tongue Fraternities) that gradually strengthened the rebirth of Galician identity. Today Galicia participates in the democracy that was established in Spain with a system of Parliamentary Monarchy, under an autonomous government regime.

GALICIANS IN ARGENTINA

There is a deep bond between Galicia and America, which was particularly intensified in the 19th Century, once the nations that had been part of the Spanish Empire had already become independent. Although the Galicians participated from the start in the conquest, settlement and colonization of these territories, they had a lesser influence in their political organization, since Galicians were from a reign that had little weight in the Spanish monarchy, and lacked legislative autonomy or representation in Madrid's parliament or Cortes.

The fact that they considered themselves different from their other countrymen, plus the need to be protected by their community, gave rise to a strong group feeling among Galicians. In 1787, Buenos Aires, that since 1776 was the capital of the Viceroyship of the Provinces of the Plata River, saw the creation of the "Apostle Santiago Congregation of the Children and Natives of the Kingdom of Galicia," the first Galician association in South America. Also in Buenos Aires, in 1806 the Galician Tercio (regiment) was created, an infantry unit of urban militia which distinguished themselves as part of the Viceroyship's army in the Second British Invasion of 1807. Several members of this unit participated, some years later, in the ranks of patriots that fought during the War of Independence, for example its former commander, Pedro A. Cerviño, an engineer, mathematician and journalist, or Bernardino Rivadavia, first Argentine President (1826-1827), son of Galicians and an Army captain in 1807.

Buenos Aires began the process of breaking away from the old metropolis in 1810, with the Revolution of 25 May 1810. The conflict, which lasted almost two decades, caused a temporary break with everything Hispanic, and interrupted Galician migration to the Plata river. With the beginning of the definitive organization of the Republic of Argentina, after the approval of the National Constitution in 1853 and the bloody war with Paraguay (1865-1869), the young nation began to emerge as a new economic power, that was rapidly catching up with modern technology and rivalled the most advanced countries of the day. This was the time when qualified European immigration began being fostered, as a fundamental factor in the country's progress. Thus, immigrants from almost all European countries arrived, mainly Spanish and Italian. In the fifty years extending between 1870 and 1920, over 830,000 Spaniards came to settle in the country and by 1910 -year of the Centennial of the May Revolution and time of the final reconciliation of the Argentine Republic with Spain- they represented 10% of the country's total population. The contingents from Spain's Atlantic North predominated, notably Galicians, who mostly concentrated in Buenos Aires, making it the city with the largest Galician population of the world at the time.

The descendants of these numerous immigrants plus the Galician migrants who still live in Argentine continue to form one of the most progressive communities in the country, greatly interested in maintaining their cultural identity, in which music plays a very important role.