Tundra

What to do when you don’t find what you’re looking for? You have an alternative: do it yourself

This is what went through Jorge Garrido’s and Daniel Latorre’s minds. Back in 2008, these musicians from La Rioja with shared influences they decided to create a new band. What for? To be able to listen to the music they wanted to hear and that nobody was doing. That is how Tundra was born. Nordic and Spanish influences, with Jorge’s background in jazz and traditional music and Daniel’s background in ancient music and lutherie were the essential ingredients.

Which other timbres did they need to generate the sound they were looking for? Soon Ignacio’s bagpipe and Francisco’s guitar were added. And in a land with a scarce offer of folk proposals, a few months later the quartet received their first proposal to perform. This challenge accelerated the process of creating a repertoire for live performances and laid the foundations for their first album, Folk Ancestro Sideral (2013), which they would record thanks to their winning in the Gota de Música contest of Logroño’s city council.

In 2013 Daniel Latorre leaves the band to focus on lutherie. The hurdy-gurdy player, founder of La Musgaña, Rafa Martín, joined the band. He already participated in the second album, Bastardüs (2017). For the third album the band makes a transcendental decision: to incorporate a singer. Rubén Ezquerro, actor, clown and showman, will be the chosen one. He completes the quintet that has released the third album – “Voces del Desarraigo” at the beginning of 2021 - 12 musical pieces, 12 gazes towards one of the most desolate territories in Western Europe: the regions around the Iberian mountain range. In this album, they have searched for the soundscape that one day surrounded the lives of the villages and peoples who inhabited their mountains and fields. Based on traditional materials, as well as on typical genres and rhythms of these locations, the band created these seven songs and five instrumental pieces. Both traditional and modern instruments are used in their compositions and arrangements, and the voice takes on an important role.

 

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