Disc by disc, and there are now eleven installments, Roger Mas has left his revitalizing mark on a genre with such a deep tradition in the Catalan imaginary as the songwriter, combining mysticism and irony, a gift for diaphanous tones and a certain sensory transcendence with views to the other side of the mirror. Now that almost everything is at least 25 years old, it should no longer be surprising that the Solsona troubadour commemorates precisely five decades in the trade and that he does so without self-complacency: there’s that new album, ‘Totes les flors’, which toured completely this Sunday at the Auditori (room 2), framed in the first weekend of Barnasants.
It was a recital condensing her qualities even without resorting to the repertoire of classics, because ‘Totes les flors’ has something of an anthology, with premiere songs, but expressing a wide repertoire of expressive modes: the deceptive volatility of the title track (the girl that spreads the flowers and the one that tramples them with delight) and the spiritual recollection of ‘Tu vols àngels xisclant’; the rumbera and mischievous ‘Amb la polla i amb l’ou’, consecrated to Carme Ruscalleda, and the tribute to the “creative genius”, with a mariachi touch, from ‘Des del pont de la ciència”. In ‘Mort, qui t’ha mort’, jokingly, she came to tell us that it is not power that wants to stupefy the people with bread and circuses, but rather that it is the power that demands it, and in ‘Si us blau’ he revived a blues that had been stuck for years with the guitar plucking of a learned guest, Quico Pi de la Serra.
enchanted songbook
Voice at its point of severity with double background, in a very fluid dialogue with his accomplices, those with a long history (the pianist Xavier Guitó and the bassist and double bassist Arcadi Marcet) and that secret weapon called Míriam Encinas Laffitte, wrapping the songs in Indian spices (the dilruba) and applying flutes and percussion. With them, Roger Mas displayed his songbook illuminated by a deep-rooted forest enchantment, as in the rescues of ‘Les tres germanes’ (one of the four quotes from ‘La casa d’enlloc’, 2010, an album he dedicated to the recently deceased Ramon Muntaner), ‘El rei dels verns’ or the traditional English ‘Jordi’.
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Mas overlooked his most pop album (‘Mística domèstica’, 2005, produced by Raül Refree), as well as his most metaphysical one (‘Les cançons tel·lúriques’, 2008), but there were nods to the 25th anniversary of his career with distant pieces What ‘I the feather is going to assecar…’ (which in his day he recorded with the choir of teachers Sisa and Pau Riba) and ‘Volant’, who reemerged in full ultramontane force. Compositions with which he reminded us that his thing, that obstinate trajectory of a troubadour in uncertain times, is still a prodigy and a gift, because, as he slipped into ‘Le chansonnier miraculeux’, the singer-songwriter touches you and the song heals you.