On March 28, 2026, professors Elena Freire Paz and Marta Veiga Izaguirre from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Lugo Campus) and M.ª Pilar Panero García from the University of Valladolid, principal investigator of the MASKS project, engaged the attending audience in conversations on “Masks and Gender” and “The Expansion of the Ethnological and Mask-Making Art.” The morning concluded with the De mano en mano recital by folk specialist musician Luis Antonio Pedraza, author of the song Winter Mask, which he has generously contributed to accompany many of the project’s videos. The event was coordinated by Ana Estévez Lavandeira, head of education at the MPG.
Popular culture is no longer a fixed set of inherited traditions passed unchanged from generation to generation. Today, it reveals itself as a living space in constant transformation, where traditions cross paths, renew themselves, and exchange with other cultural practices. From a contemporary perspective, it is no longer sufficient to define it solely by what is craft-based, oral, or traditional, nor even as opposed to dominant cultural forms. The popular is built instead through the continuous encounter between local practices, collective memories, and mass-diffusion dynamics, giving rise to hybrid expressions, as researcher Néstor García Canclini aptly notes. These expressions reflect the complexity of our current societies and show that the mask goes far beyond the purely artistic.
Understanding popular culture requires observing, at the same time, how cultural practices are lived in concrete territories and how they circulate, transform, and acquire new meanings in media and digital spaces. Communities, far from being passive recipients, act as active agents: they reinterpret their cultural heritage, adapt it to their reality, an it new meanings in dialogue with the present.
In this context, mask culture emerges as a dynamic territory where tradition, modernity, and mass culture do not exclude one another but coexist in a creative tension that generates new forms of identity and collective expression. Beyond Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of “distinction,” which links mask-making art to an exclusive aesthetic aura, the mask comes back to life again and again, rooted in the social conditions in which it is produced. In the 21st century, the mask has become a key platform for debating gender issues and for peacefully articulating the overcoming of social inequalities.
The mask, therefore, is not only an object of the past: it is a living instrument of social transformation that connects traditional roots with present-day challenges and opens pathways toward a more inclusive future.
In “De mano en mano”, Pedraza travels alone through his instruments, which have passed “from hand to hand” to the essence of musical tradition. This is an ambitious project led by the renowned Basque musician Kepa Junkera, through which Pedraza returns to the roots of traditional music. The project seeks to honor the tamborileros, who for decades have kept the essence of traditional heritage alive, passing on “from hand to hand” both their instruments and the care of cultural legacy.
The recital features original instruments from some of the legendary interpreters of traditional music and includes melodies collected in the Zamoran regions of Sayago, Aliste, and “La Raya.” Today, these wonderful melodies pass through the hands of Luis Antonio Pedraza before reaching the next generation. A project that tells “a life story,” filled with music and “even more heart.”
From MASKS, we thank the attending audience for their engagement.
