The encyclopaedia will be published in book format and an online version that can be viewed on Soinuenea's website.

The book consists of volumes that we will publish gradually. As for its structure, we will follow the one presented in the section titled Classification of Instruments based on the Hornbostel-Sachs system but adapted to our context. Indeed, we have taken the liberty of adapting the order and distribution of the sub-groups proposed by Hornbostel-Sachs. When we organised the exhibition in Soinuenea we arranged the groups according to the opportunities offered to us by the space there. On this basis, aerophones (wind instruments) are the first –and most numerous– group. Following the same logic, aerophones will also occupy first place in the book. The first two volumes will be dedicated to wind instruments, the third to membranophones (mainly drums), the fourth to idiophones (most percussion instruments that are not drums) and the fifth to cordophones (stringed instruments) and others.

All the volumes will be accompanied by a CD, which will have a section with musical comments. The online version adds to the book version with more extensive audiovisual materials and updated texts.

By presenting the wind instruments in two volumes, we have opted for starting with instruments that have the air column in a receptacle or tube, specifically those that have a sharpened chamfer or edge: flutes. The rest will be grouped in the second volume: single- and double-reed instruments (clarinets and oboes), xirolarrus (single-reed pipes), instruments with a free reed, lip vibration (trumpets) and free wind instruments (i.e. in which the air vibrates free, not inside a tube or closed body).

On popular music

The popular culture of a people is one of the elements that expresses its singularity most clearly, and music is one of the most important expressions. The question remains: what is that cultural heritage that is so linked to a people, and what form does it take?

Some people believe that popular music is an immutable phenomenon and that traditions have always remained the same. According to them, traditional music can only be reproduced without any room for creativity. Indeed, some musicians or researchers stake a claim for the authenticity and purity of the real or original version.

Fortunately, many more people believe that popular music, after being created at a certain moment in history, continually recreates itself through change. From this perspective, it has been directly transmitted from generation to generation within a community or family, and each generation has participated in its composition. Indeed, we could say that every person who has played this music has made a contribution to it. As a result, popular songbooks have been developed over the years thanks to individual and collective efforts, giving them a singular nature.

Researchers have seen how a single melody or song has a different version in one place or another, or even in the same place from one generation to another. Music also takes on very different styles depending on whether it is sung or played with one instrument or another.

We can find melodic variations in both written and audiovisual repertoires. We also believe that a performer constantly creates variations in a natural way, even in the same performance! That is why we say that popular music is a living and changing phenomenon. Obviously, before musical notation and recordings existed variations were more frequent and notable because there were no tools to represent and/or reproduce the music. Musicians had to rely on their memory, and human memory tends towards creation by its very nature.

Nor should we forget that popular cultures have always been open phenomena in contact with other peoples and music, with interaction between them. There is not one people on Earth that has not received external influences. Indeed, in modern-day society what predominates is diversity: people of different origins coexist at home, in their neighbourhood, at school and in the workplace. Nowadays, when talking about popular culture the idea of purity makes less sense than ever.

Another characteristic feature of our time is that, and particularly in Western countries, the experience and transmission of culture are largely conditioned by the media, i.e. they are very closely linked to written or visual media and are produced on an increasingly individualised basis instead of live or together with other people (i.e. collectively). The digital world and the social media cross national borders, and the fact that so many different forms of expression are immediately available has had a major impact on our character, both on the individual and the group level. Popular culture and the mechanisms that influence consumer trends inevitably affect us.

Like the economy, society and lifestyles have changed, and popular culture is no exception to this process. In festivities, for example, the trend towards staging performances has increased, to the detriment of creative participation (dance, singing, music, games). Recorded music also occupies spaces where there was previously silence (i.e. absence of music) or live music.

Basically, we need to acknowledge that society is undergoing deep changes at a pace unthinkable in previous centuries. Without succumbing to nostalgia, this is an effort to compile and get to know the diversity of music that has been deep-rooted in the Basque Country.

We need to be clear that the situations and functions of the past will not be coming back (not even the needs). On the contrary, modern-day popular music should provide responses to our current aspirations and needs. In this process of adaptation we need to understand what has survived to date and focus on its most valuable aspects, so that they can serve as a basis for popular culture and creativity.

This encyclopaedia is an attempt to rewrite memory: we have set out to compile testimonies from musicians and researchers collected through fieldwork in the 20^th century, rounding it off with a variety of documentation in the most scientific way possible to offer a basis to present-day and future musicians.

Therefore, when telling this story we will speak of objects, knowing that instruments are much more than that: they are tools created by human beings to play with sound. Although they are made of materials they are means to create sound or music, which we consider an immaterial expression. Sometimes they also function as symbols, and depending on the era have had -and given performers- special prestige and status in society. Therefore, by speaking of objects we inevitably refer to history, culture and society.

Instruments in popular music

Musicians have given form to popular music through instruments in all the cultures of the world. Instruments have an influence on the quality of the music, but they have also been modelled according to the tastes, capacity and imagination of a community –and of the musicians themselves– to turn the music they wanted to create into a reality.

Some instruments have been played for thousands of years in a particular area, while others have had a shorter time in the same society. How can we determine which are local and which are external? What criteria should we apply? The answer is both simple and complex. Even if it comes from outside, an instrument used in a society for a long period of time that has developed particular features in terms of the materials used and its construction, appearance, way of playing, sound, the music it creates or its functions, etc. can be considered an instrument of local origin. Furthermore, what society knows and recognises as local is inevitably autochthonous, regardless of how old it is.

We should bear in mind that most of the instruments we know today did not have their current appearance or characteristics when they were created. They have been modified over the years to respond to the needs of the time. If an instrument lasts, it is because it fulfils a certain function. If things have nothing to justify their existence, or nobody identifies with them, they tend to disappear.

We also find similar instruments in different parts of the world; they seem to be related. This does not necessarily mean that one is older than the other, or that one particular traveller disseminated the instrument across the world. A simple explanation is that they could be made under the same principle, in the same way that it is likely that the discovery of fire did not take place in a particular place on one day by a single group of human beings, but by different people at different moments and periods of history.