A Vocation...

     Since 1987, date of its creation by Father Jean Eliçagaray, Chaplain of the Basques of Paris, the Anaiki Basques Male Voice Choir chose as a vocation to show and spread the Basque Culture through its most beautiful melodies.
The Basque are numerous in the capital. They form a community which willingly meets at Priseko Eskual Etxea, the Basque House of Paris, place where the choir practises.
Conducted since 1990 by Jean-Marie Guezala, Anaiki gathers more than 30 singers together, all passioned amateurs, and contributes to introduce a whole country with its culture, in Paris, in France and foreign countries.

Friendship serving a repertory

Friendship and brotherhood are the bases on which the members of the band all draw. As a matter of fact, Anaiki means “among brothers”…

Singing, for male choirs, is not something rare in Basque Country, on the contrary. Profusion of melodies, orchestrations and harmonizations is the sign of an unequalled keeness.

Descended from a centuries-old tradition, either initiated by a few “Bertsolari” – versifier and improviser poets – or simply by the people itself, or else by fishermen confraternities and various guilds, their harmonizations date mainly from the ending 19th century and early 20th century.

However, some of these melodies are much older, and even medieval, and describe deep feelings and everyday-life situations. By turns romantic, religious, patriotic, playfull or more melancholic, it’s a very rich and contrasted image that the Anaiki’s Male Choir wishes to share with us.