Original in Catalan: La glosa i els garrotins
Making up verses on the spot, with rhyme, singing, in front of everyone. That’s the glosa: improvised song in Catalan.
In the Balearic Islands it’s called glosa and it’s still very much alive, above all in Mallorca and Menorca. In Mallorca it’s sung bare, with no instruments: stanzas of about six seven-syllable lines, with full, alternating rhyme. In Menorca, on the other hand, a guitar player comes along, and usually two glosadors answer each other. When two glosadors face off on a stage, that’s a combat. In Catalonia proper the same game is played with corrandes (the ones from Beget, from Folgueroles…).
And then there are the garrotins: a fixed chorus, “al garrotín, al garrotán”, with improvised verses in between, often with a sting in the tail and a sideways look at society. The Roma of Lleida made them famous (el Parrano, La Violeta, the Garrotan), with a rumba and flamenco feel. Their origin, though, seems to be Asturian, and the idea that they’re “from Lleida forever” has no documentary proof. There, I said it.
It’s pure Impro: what you don’t prepare isn’t there, and if you get it wrong, the mistake rhymes too.
Cousins: the Inuit poetry duels, where improvised verse was used to settle fights.
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glosa https://www.enciclopedia.cat/gran-enciclopedia-catalana/garrotin