The Creation of Basque Oral Poetry by Four American Bertsolaris

In this article I analyze Basque oral poetry, or bertsolaritza, by four poets who live in the United States. We start with a remarkable fact: all four bertsolaris come from the Spanish region of Navarre. They include Jesus "Jess" Goñi, born in Oronoz in 1947; Martin Goikoetxea, born in Gorriti in 1948; Jesus "Jess" Arriada, born in Arizkun in 1935; and Johnny Kurutxet, born in San Francisco in 1946 but raised in Esterenzubi and resident there until the age of 20. The overall situation in the USA has been well described by the researcher Joxe Mallea in several publications (2003, 2005). Within that context this paper specifically examines the production of the American bertsolaris.¹ The corpus I will use for this analysis consists of a selection of 237 bertsos composed by these four oral poets and recorded and transcribed in the USA.

Jesus "Jess" Goñi, Martin Goikoetxea, Jesus "Jess" Arriada, and Johnny Kurutxet.

Photo: Xenpelar Document Center, used by permission.

Martin Goikoetxea (on left) and Jesus Goñi performing in Boise, Idaho.

Photo: Xenpelar Document Center, used by permission.

Jesus Goñi (left), Johnny Kurutxet (middle), and Martin Goikoetxea (right).

Photo: Xenpelar Document Center, used by permission.

Of course, bertsolaritza is a communicative act. The text produced by a bertsolari while performing is a dimension of this speech-act, perhaps the most important one. Other aspects (such as kinesis, melodies, and so on) are not considered here. Even so, textual analysis will let us approach this performative act, revealing the main compositional strategies used to create bertsos. These strategies reflect each bertsolari's background and artistic repertoire. Moreover, in some cases the text is all that remains from some performances.

Before beginning our examination, we may briefly recall the general situation of the bertsolaris in the USA. Joxe Mallea provides a wonderful view of the context: "The poets living in the United States are isolated from the whole bertsolari movement, not to mention the heart of the Basque-speaking population, making it extremely difficult for them to keep their inventive edge sharp" (2003:50). One of our goals will be to determine whether this isolation has any discernible influence in the bertsos performed by these four poets.

In order to offer a deeper and more pluralistic point of view, this analysis will follow a set of steps closely related to some aspects and elements of bertsolaritza. First of all, it takes into account the rhyme, the last sentence, and the verse. I will also talk about the importance of rhetoric, which has often been identified as the most promising framework for understanding bertsolaritza. In many quarters rhetoric is understood as a part of pragmatics, or speech analysis; as Dominique Maingueneau explains: "La rhétorique, l'étude de la force persuasive du discours, s'inscrit pleinement dans le domaine que balise à présent la pragmatique" (1990:1).

One conventional theory divides rhetoric into three genres: legal, deliberative, and epideictic. According to this categorization, the epideictic genre could also include persuasion, but only in a special way; it does not seek any special reaction, but rather wants to influence the values and beliefs of the receiver. Persuasion is also visible in dialectics; in this case, it is not intended to reach an agreement, but tries to change the receiver's mind in a certain way. We all know that one of the objectives of bertsolaris, maybe the most important one, is to thrill and excite. Thus, it seems that bertsolaritza belongs to the epideictic genre, as Joxerra Garzia explains:

We can state, thus, that it is rhetoric and more specifically its epideictic genre, which is the natural framework for a full understanding of the phenomenon of improvised bertsolaritza …. We can, therefore, refine our definition of improvised bertsolaritza offered at the beginning of this section, stating that bertsolaritza is a rhetorical genre of an epideictic, oral, sung and improvised nature (Garzia et al. 2001:181).

In concert with this perspective, I will try to characterize the...