In Lapurdi, Nafarroa Beherea and Zuberoa a good effort is being made for sometime to stick to traditional singing recovering and revising old songs. Even if those more cultivated songs show a higher level of literacy compared to pieces passed on with no written medium, both from a musical standpoint and from the point of view of the images and the language used in them, they are representative examples of our popular literary tradition.

This type of song is common in areas where local traditions are highly valued and often report a historical event or a true anecdote that truly happened. They are tightly attached to the village or town, and even to its households and their customs.

We understand now the act of writing them: some household member who enjoyed the lyrics and tune of the songs would learn them by heart and write them in a little notebook. Then the notebook with the collection of songs would have been kept in the house and passed from generation to generation, and we should be grateful because many of our folk songs have reached to us thanks to them having been written.

Begi-urdin
Banka (Nafarroa Beherea)