Born in Toro, Zamora, Maria Salgado is one of the best Spanish female singers and a clear exponent of roots music. Interested since her young years in getting to know the cultural and musical heritage of Castille and León, the region where she still lives, her performances and her re-creation of the inherited songs that provide identity and musical background for one of the largest regions in Europe have taken her to such countries as Germany, France, Czech Republic, Algeria and Portugal and her career has been awarded the Racimo de Oro de la Música.

She is a salient pupil of Agapito Marazuela and Joaquín Díaz, veritable icons of Spanish traditional music. Marazuela, the great folk master from Segovia, revealed to her the characteristic tones of the most authentic traditional singing. His teachings helped her to record a splendid album, Canciones de amor y de trabajo, a pioneer in its time, with songs which Marazuela had rescued from oblivion and published in his book Cancionero de Castilla. In that 1980 album María refurbished the old tunes and introduced modern instruments without losing the individuality and vigour of the songs.

From Joaquín Díaz, her other mentor, she garnered the importance of knowing and loving the immediate past and she learned to reinterpret it under a different light that was more humane and world-wise. She sang with him as collaborator on several recordings, among which El calendario del pueblo, a multi-volume project shared with other folk artists such as Raíces, Candeal, Joaquín González and Ángel Carril.

Poetic texts, skin deep sensibility in performance and diversity of subjects are some of the ingredients María Salgado has been using to carve out a prestigious, cohesive musical career. Ten solo albums and many collaborative and joint projects attest to María’s rich production, with a penchant for innovation rooted in a deep background knowlege. Besides Castillian traditional music, she has been walking the paths of bolero, fado, the “cantos de ida y vuelta” (styles that went from Spain to the Americas and back) and Sephardic song. She must be credited for proving with her album Mirándote that in inland Spain you can find habaneras that are every bit as beautiful and mysterious as the ones that are sung on the Mediterranean shores. She was one of the artists (together with Martirio, Omara Portuondo and Pablo Guerrero) who recorded a tribute album to the Cuban composer María Teresa Vera. With La sal de la vida, another collaborative album with the Sudanese Rasha and the Galician Uxia, María showed that the language of music and art in general is the most powerful way to join cultures and peoples. Something similar may be said about 7 modos de guisar las berenjenas, her remarkable, previous album in which nostalgic Sephardic tunes collected in Greece alternated easily with new compositions. Even so, María Salgado leaves room for other suprises in her live performances, where she usually sings a bunch of little jewels that stride the mild slopes of guajira, petenera, fado and bolero.

With Abrecaminos, her latest album, María returns to her Castillian roots presenting us with songs which she had been performing live ever since she began, but had never got around to recording, such as “El canto de la cigüeña”, “Sal a bailar” and the “Ronda sanabresa”, all of it mingled with Eastern and Sephardic rhythms and some new compositions. A splendid album with delicate arrangements and elegant instrumentation, placidly recorded in the El Bierzo countryside.

Her background and her artistic heritage aside, if the voice would have been accorded the consideration of a musical instrument, by now María Salgado’s performances might very well have changed the perception that foreigners still have about the music and the songs of Castille.