It has been called pop or pop-rock music the music made internationally from the 1950-60s onwards, under the main influence of the new Anglo-Saxon rhythms and the Franco-Italian song. In Euskal Herria it would have been above all the interpreters of the so-called “new Basque song” who introduced in our popular culture that type of musical proposal (more in key of pop than of rock), as it happened with the Catalan, Castilian, Galician “new song”, etc. The most genuine assimilation of pop-rock in group format would correspond to the time of the so-called musical groups, in the 60's. And the most genuine rock would settle in the 70's deriving, already in the 80's, towards punk, noise and the dozens of variants that the music considered “young” has known and knows, practically all over the world.
If in the first Basque pop music it was above all the use of the Basque language that gave it a range of specificity, of certain autonomy, the greatest difference or own personality has been achieved by mixing the electric and electronic instruments of making music with traditional Basque supports (txalaparta), more modern ones (trikitixa) and other similar variants. They have also tended to recognize as autochthonous forms the lyricism of the traditional songbook transferred to the current songs and, in its opposite extreme, the radicality or at least hardness, in form and bottom, of many of the Basque rock groups.
Among the pioneer Basque singers, Mikel Laboa (nicknamed “Azken” in his beginnings), has mentioned historical singers such as the Argentinean singer Atahualpa Yupanqui or the American Bob Dylan as two of his major influences. Benito Lertxundi has always mentioned Elvis Presley or The Shadows as influences and recorded in Basque a composition by the Scottish pop singer-songwriter Donovan. Xabier Lete has recognized the influence of French-speaking song in his songs, for example Georges Brassens. And Lurdes Iriondo was edly compared to Joan Baez.
In the era of the musical ensembles, the Urrentxindorrak bergaratarras (Urrentxindorrak from Bergaratar) translated into Basque the well-known pop song Anushka or Atahualpa Yupanqui himself in Gurdi ardatzak. Erlak did the same with Those Were The Days, by Mary Hopkins, as Bakardadea, and his Kennedy gure laguna zan was answered decades later by the group Negu Gorriak. Ameslariak covered Les Surfs, Nina y Frederick or Los Brincos in Basque. These are just a few examples of the slow but inexorable influence of international pop-rock on the contemporary Basque and Euskaldun song scene which, in addition to using Basque and Spanish (and more rarely French in Iparralde) indistinctly, frequently switched to English, a generalized linguistic habit nowadays among the new pop-rock generations.
This first wave of new Basque language songs was composed by, among others: the great Ipartaran pioneer Michel Labèguerie, who recorded for the first time in 1963; the Ez Dok Amairu collective, with some of the names already mentioned above and others such as the Artze brothers, the Irigarai, Julen Lekuona, etc.. The Soroa Quartet (which translated Anglo-Saxon songs into Basque), Ameslariak, Oskarbi, Bozkari, Naikari, Estibaliz, Maite Idirin (interpreter in her beginnings of Yupanqui's songs in Basque, translated by the rupturist poet from Bilbao Gabriel Aresti), the Ipartarian Estitxu, Amaia Kasasola, Bittor Egurrola, Txomin Bengoa, Antton Valverde and many others.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)