Review Text
Of all the evils that threatened the Spanish monarchy around 1600, perhaps the worst was the inclination of it's subjects towards enjoyment and debauchery, which led to the creation and practice of a myriad of festive and lascivious dances. Thus, dance-songs were censured and prohibited, and accompanied by severe punishments (lashes, galleys, exiles...) With lost or non-existent scores, the only way to revive these dances has been by reconstructing their melodies and rhythms from their surviving evidence: the poems and the harmony. An adventure to recreate and perform the words that the moralists pointed out as "obscene", and the provocative gestures of the female dancers, who carried out "awkward and dirty acts with extreme dishonesty, wiggling and innuendos, embracing and kissing using mouth and arms, loins and the whole body as it is done in brothels." There is no other solution but to completely eradicate such pernicious practices that were "coming straight out of hell to seriously offend our Lord." Rachel Andueza and La Galania present these songs in all of their originality and sensuality.
