Killer Beats - Death by Music

The "cantiga de amigo" is a particular genre of Iberian medieval poetry, intended to express the female perspective on absent love. The cantigas were love songs in expressing fierce longing, intense interiority, joy and sorrow.Together with other genres of cantiga, they survive in quantity. The only medieval cantigas aside from the massive Cantigas de Santa María to survive with music are those written by Martin Codax all of whom describe a woman’s longing for her absent lover in straightforward, risqué poetry. The traditional elements of this genre are also present: sadness at being abandoned, bucolic images and the ever-watchful mother. As the only secular examples of a primarily secular tradition, they are thus of unique value, even though the music for the sixth cantiga has not survived. They are written in Galician-Portuguese, the dominant vernacular literary language of medieval Spain, and apparently form a cycle. They are the most representative Iberian example of the broader phenomenon of troubadour songs.