★★★★ The Galician from Barcelona. The most Argentine of the Spaniards. The guy he’s loved and hated, many times more for his ideas than for his art. The huge singer-songwriter who changed the course of things. The transatlantic friend who stood up in difficult times. His name is Joan Manuel Serrat. He is the son of a marriage between a Catalan anarchist plumber and a housewife from Zaragoza. And although he has sung and recorded a lot in the language of his native Poble Sec, it was with Spanish that he became international and that he became, also around here, one of the most significant artists of the second part of the Last century.
Serrat in Argentina is traversed by thousands of personal stories, memories, songs that could not be better achieved, the best interpreter for a repertoire that speaks of love, injustice, the struggle of peoples and even ecology. By the way, there’s no way he’s equally great at everything he did; it would be a utopia. But the highest flight is so voluminous that it will be a long time before we have a singer/songwriter/poet of such magnitude on stage again.
This tour has all the necessary seasonings for excitement; including the particularity that there will be small changes in each one. For example, we had to listen to an interpretation of “Vendedor de yuyos” by Atahualpa Yupanqui that will not be heard at all. But, of course, at the base of his concerts will always be his wonderful “My childhood”, “Lucía”, “Señora”, “Pénélope”, “Fiesta”, “Your name tastes like grass to me”, “Mediterranean”. She will remember every night the tragic story of his grandfather with “El carousel del Furo”. He will pay homage to her mother with the bilingual “Cançó de bressol” and to her “Pare” with his impressive environmental statement in Catalan. They will have their moments Miguel Hernández –“Las nanas de la cebolla”, “Para la libertad”- and Antonio Machado –“Cantares”-. She will talk to the audience, a little more than at other recitals, and will do some funny stand up passes. He will be accompanied by a septet led by his faithful Ricard Miralles and in which there is no lack of another legendary, Josep Mas “Kutflas”. He will do a duet with his violist Úrsula Amargós for “Es capricoso el azar”. And although he will complain about his baldness and that he has “knees made of dust”, he will look very good with his 78 years and the blows that his health has suffered. Naturally, his voice does not have the brilliance of youthful stages and some melodies have deserved changes to avoid unsympathetic treble. But who can care; nor to the harsh critics that we dedicate ourselves to that. The emotion, that of the public and that of the artist himself, in this case exceeds everything. So there is no other way to close this note with a “thank you Nano, for everything; the doors will always be open around here.”
