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Artist: Mercedes Peon
Category: Europe/Middle East
Mercedes Peon is often dubbed 'Spain's answer to Sinead O Connor'. Initially, the comparison is easy to make: both singers possess big voices, strong personalities, energetic stage presence and shaven heads... yup, Mercedes also likes to keep her hair very closely cropped.
Musically, there are few similarities. Where Sinead makes lush pop music, Mercedes is more interested in tracing the roots of Galicia's traditional music and then making modern musical connections. Her instrument of choice is the Galician bagpipes which share a common root with Irish and Scottish pipes but have developed differently. In her band she features other traditional Galician instruments - a hurdy gurdy, fiddle, accordion, even a farmer's hoe! Alongside this are drums, bass, electric guitar and keyboards.
Galicia, in the north-west of Spain, has found its traditional music forms revived recently. Partly this is a response to the region demonstrating its unique character as Spain works out its individual regional identities in the post-Franco years. Also, Galicia has been making contact with other Celtic countries and the influence of such Irish traditional outfits as The Chieftains - who have toured in Galicia and encouraged local musicians such as piper Carlos Nunez - have lent a newfound respect and popularity to a music long dismissed as that of old farmers.
Mercedes Peon is the youngest and freshest of all the new Galician traditionalists. In Spain she is already a major star and the rock and reggae influences she blends into her music have helped establish her with younger listeners.
'When we were growing up it wasn't seen as right to be listening to Galician music,' says Peon. 'Everyone listened to American and British music or Spanish pop. But now there's a real respect, a love, for the music of Galicia. The music was almost forgotten by the end of the Franco era but the old musicians kept it alive in the villages and now we, the new generation, can take it from Galicia to the rest of Spain and then to the world.'
Biography by Garth Cartwright, November 2001
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