Under a winter cold and between songs, with the Mediterranean Sea as an anthem almost turned into a psalm, about a hundred followers of Joan Manuel Serrat waited in the street at midnight on Wednesday for his farewell to the New York theater where he began his international tour to say goodbye to the stage, which ends on December 23 in Barcelona. At the Beacon Theatre, a centuries-old venue that seats almost 3,000 – all occupied; the tickets that have been sold for months—, the singer-songwriter, the poet and minstrel, the storyteller and great seducer of the word, unwound more than twenty songs as a résumé of his career, active 56 years in which “there has not been a concert nor one , never [ha sido] a task of dressing,” he explained after the concert.
And believe that last night wasn’t at all. After more than two years without going on stage (“since the fall of Joaquín Sabina at the concert in Madrid” in February 2020, on the eve of the pandemic), Serrat made up for confinement in front of a devoted audience, speaking of all American accents . “I haven’t sung for two or three years, I’ve become a former debutante,” he said, making the audience laugh. América will be the protagonist of half of the farewell tour – the stages but not the music – of the Noi del Poble Sec, with main courses such as the four concerts that it will offer in Buenos Aires and for which there are hardly any tickets left.
I was born in Geneva, Switzerland, and although I spent summers by the Mediterranean Sea as a child, I never lived on the shores of that sea. However, when I hear Serrat’s “Nací en el Mediterráneo” I sing and dance to it as if it were my anthem 🌊 pic.twitter.com/1rjeTkRZGa
— Sarah Yáñez-Richards (@SarahYanezR) April 28, 2022
Just like that one on April 27th (“Feast of the Patroness of Catalonia, la Moreneta, and also anniversary of my father’s death 43 years ago”), a concert in which he told stories between song and song to try define what exactly this is the stuff his career is made of – his life – and which has provided the soundtrack to the existence of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic. This purpose, to explain the magic of what he has been doing for decades, allowed him to articulate the concerto by interspersing such classics as Algo personal and Para la libertad, the latter in an apotheosis version; Lucía, Señora, Hoy can be a big day or the Nanas de la Cebolla, based on the poem by Miguel Hernández, with somewhat less popular treasures, like the beautiful romance of Curro El Palmo, a sad couplet, like all couplets, a direct one Echoes of the sentimental post-war upbringing that his friend Vázquez Montalbán demanded so much and that Serrat himself had nurtured from his elders.
Songs of the copla, also of flamenco: the melodies of the radio and the patios of the neighborhood that rock him as a child and, together with the lyrics of the great poets of Spain and Latin America, forge his sensibility and aesthetics. At the concert there were memories for those who are no longer there: for the great Atahualpa Yupanqui, for Alberto Cortez, “for so many friends, more and more who I miss”.
Serrat addresses the audience during the concert. EDUARDO MUNOZ
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The tenderness of Bressol’s Cançó, the lullaby inspired by her mother, a strong and struggling woman in the midst of post-war hardships, found its match in the parental love of Those Crazy Little Ones, one of the encores, and which also wastes a love stronger than that Life. Penélope, at the request of the audience, has gone head-to-head with the most groundbreaking and modern version – thanks to some excellent musicians – of Mediterráneo, the soundtrack of many generations. “A song, as defined by the Academy, is the union of music and lyrics intended to be sung, but that is a marriage of convenience. A real song is when the music speaks and when the lyrics sing, when there is a story”. The house’s signature humor wove a rosary of memories, memories and emotions, including those of loss.
Excited (“although one shouldn’t let emotions get carried away at a concert”), repeatedly cheered on by the audience, who interrupted her songs with applause or sang along with her verse for verse, Serrat underlined his commitment to freedom and Einziglich seriously stood up for to warn at the end of the concert after more than two and a half hours of mutual devotion – from the musicians and the audience – about the evils of the earth. “It hurts a lot to think of the dirty will we will bequeath to our children. If we ever meet again, I hope that the word tomorrow will be synonymous with life.”
He did it with Pare (Father), the song in Catalan that he composed in 1973 and which, unfortunately, he never thought would still be valid 50 years later. “The field is no longer the field / Tomorrow it will rain blood from heaven / The wind sings it weeping”.