Fifty Years of Nuevu Canciu Astur, Pioneers of the New Asturian Music

Abstract

In August 1975, a series of concerts were held in Xixón that marked the beginning of the Asturian musical movement known as Nuevu Canciu Astur. On the fiftieth anniversary of those concerts, one of the leading figures of the movement—the singer-songwriter Carlos Rubiera—offers an assessment of the significance that the work of those pioneers had for the New Asturian Music. To date, they have left us nearly three hundred distinct songs across more than forty discographic and bibliographic publications. At the same time, he calls upon specialists—musicologists, linguists and sociologists—to engage seriously with the study of their musical and literary output, as well as with the role played by sung music in Asturian in the process of linguistic dignification and normalisation from that time to the present day.