Amuma Says No, Basque music rocking all over the United States

When Dan Ansotegui, Jill Aldape, Sean Aucutt and Spencer Martin, four Boise Basques, met to start a Basque band, the first name they chose was Kulunka, which means 'rocking' in Basque language. They wanted a play of words meaning something like rock&roll, but nobody got it and it was hard for the Americans to say.

So they decided they wanted a new name with some Basque words in it but also something in English. They sat down at the Basque center downtow Boise, had some beers and went over some names. They were voting but, for most of them, Jill kept saying her amuma, grandma in Basque language, would not be able to pronounce it. Then, it was Sean who said: Amuma says no!

Now, almost three years after, Amuma Says No have played not only in lots of events in Boise, but have been invited as well to Mountain Home, Caldwell, Homedale, Elko, Winnemucca, Seattle, Bakersfield, San Francisco and to an International Folk Festival in San Antonio, Texas.

The Basque-American band takes traditional Basque music and plays it with a different style allowing the drums, the bass and the guitar to play in a way in which it is recognizable as a biribilketa or a fandango but has a different sound too.

"We hope to keep this music alive here and to have a live band that is here in America, that is taking all these different influences from the Basque Country and other influences and just kind of creating our own thing," Spencer says.

For Dan, it is all about keeping the Basque traditions alive. "You can mirror something, you can copy it, but every time you copy it, it is a little bit less. The other way is to put your own ideas into that and then come out with something new. And that is what we think is a more honest approach to it, we do not deny our American roots, and we do not deny the influences that we have, and we try to blend those and have something new," he says.

"We have a lot of people that come over and think we are a band from the Basque Country. And that is a nice compliment, we like that," Sean adds.

Create new things

ASN does not write its own songs yet but that is their own step. "We were hoping that the time between last Christmas and summer we would have time to do that because we play less. As it was, we played quite a lot. We did not have time to sit down with ideas. I think it is our next step", Dan says.

"I think we are finally at that point when we have enough songs that we can play at any gig and we can now start to create new things. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next year, what kind of tunes we can put together," Dan says.

For this new challenge, the Basque band will have to find their own sound. "I would like to see us trying to define our sound and see where that lead us. And we do not really know what kind of talent we have," Dan recounts.

Basque and American influences

The group has already recorded two CDs with some of the songs that they perform. Playing live is fun but recording made them become better. "When we made the decision to record, the band got exponentially better, because we really had to go and define how we were going to play what", Spencer says.

If they had to choose one song out of all the songs they play, they would choose "Maite Zaitut", of the Basque clowns Pirritx eta Porrotx. "It is not our song but it certainly has arrangements and it is quite different, specially near the end. It switches to a Samba, it switches to a break dance, that is where it really has our mark on. It has that really modern section that is different", Spencer explains.

Tapia eta Leturia, Oskorri and Benito Lertxundi are some of the main influences of the band but they also follow contemporary Basque bands or non-Basque musicians such as Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes or Johny Cash.

In the future, ASN would like to play more in the United States. For them, to play in the Basque Country would be special. "We would love to do that", Spencer says.

Anyhow, they will always be grateful to Boise. For Dan, to form ASN would not have been able in any other place and they are lucky they are in Boise. "To get Sean play the pandereta is crazy, and Jill's presence on stage is amazing, and Spencer the drums. We are very lucky and this could not happen five years ago in Boise, because we did not have all the people that we needed", Dan says.