Almez, the folk music group from Toledo, will premiere their ‘Celtis Australis’ on Friday, the song they have created for the double album “Música por el Tajo”, at the big festival to be held next weekend to remember that 50 years have passed since the prohibition of bathing in its waters as it passes through Toledo.
Almez has participated in the album that, together with 37 musicians and bands from the province of Toledo, has been promoted by the Royal Toledo Foundation to give visibility to the problem suffered by the Tagus River. The group, with a history of more than 20 years, is delighted to have been able to participate in the project and wishes to present the theme that bears the name of its latest album, according to what Miro Cid, one of the members of Almez, explains to ABC. a name that evokes nature, those trees that grow strong in Toledo, many next to the now dying river.
Galician by birth but resident in Toledo for more than 25 years, Miro Cid, who usually practices sports on the trail, feels the problem of the Tagus very closely, like all his colleagues, all of them from Toledo. For this reason, when Eduardo Sánchez Butragueño, director of the Real Fundación Toledo, asked them to participate in the album, they did not hesitate. «We gave him a resounding yes; we had to be in this project. We can’t keep giving Portugal that disgusting water, we don’t want to bathe, we already want a clean Tagus in our city », he affirms.
The theme is instrumental and is recorded with the Irish tin and low-whistles accompanied by the violin and other instruments. A melody that transports nature, like Celtic music, to a natural environment near the river and that is also a tribute to his partner Víctor Sánchez-Aranzueque, who died in 2015, author of one of the scores on which he has based Almez group to create his work. They also pose with him in the photo that promotes his participation in the great concert and that was taken a few years ago in Barco Pasaje, next to the Tagus River.
Almez is formed by Marta García-Patos, violin and voice; Edelmiro Cid, bagpipes, low-whistles, tin-whistles, flutes, tambourine; Antonio Duarte, electric bass and acoustic guitar; José Luis Gascón, bouzouki, guitar, ukulele, tin whistles, bagpipes and voice; Jesús Gil, djembé, percussion, drums, flamenco cajon and effects and Jesús Alberto Luna, keyboards, accordion and guitars.
