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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2020

Bertsolaritza, culture in movement

  • Ainhoa Aizpurua-Insausti

Abstract

Bertsolaritza or improvised Basque verse singing is a strong artistic, cultural and social phenomenon within the Basque speaking community. It is this article’s aim to explain what bertsolaritza is and its relationship with Euskara (Basque language) and the Basque society. Without making any pretense of being exhaustive, analyses that have been carried out in different disciplines will be taken into account in order to understand better the survival and success of this practice from synchronic and diachronic perspectives. Special attention will be paid to verse schools (bertso-eskolak), fundamental elements for the transmission of bertsolaritza. As a conclusion, there are two main points to understand bertsolaritza’s relationship with society and Euskara: the fact of being a complex, dynamic and significant phenomenon with the capacity to adapt to society, and that it has a concrete and well-articulated autonomous cultural strategy organized around the act of improvising.

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