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The Kantujira is an initiative which, once a month, convokes a substantial number of people in order to sing traditional songs in Basque in the streets of the Old Quarter of Donostia (as well as in different neighbourhoods in the city). There are similar initiatives in towns and cities throughout the Basque Country. In this paper, I analyse the multiple dimensions of the Kantujira, which is much more than a cultural event and a way of maintaining tradition, since it plays a significant role in sociability and in shaping collective identity, while at the same time it is a form of resistance and of protest; a resistance with a particular feature, that it is made up and expressed on the basis of shared pleasure, the pleasure of singing in a group in the street, so we can consider it as a playful form of resistance. My aim is to show that we cannot understand the satisfaction of group singing without alluding to all these other dimensions. In order to achieve that, I base the study on information gathered during my ethnographic participation in the Kantujira since early 2017 to present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is focused on artistic creation, usually understood as transitivity, and separated from the idea of religious creation. Yet the artistic creation also involves a role as a believer, instead of a creator. The artist is born as a result of the experience of otherness, but as a consequence of an own belief. In a second stage, this birth is also tied to a search, driving the artist to the marginality, taking distance from the established social beliefs. In the case of music, that marginality is experienced in the pain, and gives way to hope. That is why pain and glory melt in the work of singers and composers, and the coincidence of these opposed feelings originates a powerful semantic force. This phenomenon is analyzed in the paper by the use of some examples of the work of musicians, taken from many different kinds of music and time periods: Juanito Valderrama, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Camarón, Antonio Vega or Amy Winehouse, among other examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]