Their arts as songwriters may well be framed in the sphere of popular culture, but certain hierarchical barriers have fallen and the institutions are delivered bluntly to recognize their solidified merits. they are Joan Manuel Serrat and Maria del Mar Bonet, artists who are “children of a time and a country”, he slides, and who this Monday they will be invested as doctors ‘honoris causa’ by the University of Barcelona.
From the platforms on which they performed with Els Setze Jutges, at the beginning, in the 60s, to the university auditorium seems to be a long distance away, but it is, after all, about “to recognize a cultural fact that has been very important for this country and this city& rdquor ;, Serrat points out in allusion to the era of singer-songwriters, and to the ‘nova cançó’, the movement in which they excelled when they were in their twenties. In the encounter of both with this newspaper, they are grateful and excited. “I am always surprised by this type of distinction, which relates me to people more literate than me & rdquor ;, slides Maria del Mar Bonet. “It’s an honor, and being by Joan Manuel’s side, it’s even more intense and gratifying.”
The young judges
They have been close friends for a long time, each one following their path and paying attention to their artistic instincts, since her brother, Joan Ramon Bonet (the 11th of Els Setze Jutges) brought his colleague Serrat to visit the family home in Palma . “It was a summer day and I would have been 17 years old & rdquor ;, recalls Maria del Mar Bonet. “My brother and he were very handsome and alike in many ways, and he impressed me. They were my teachers, because I still hadn’t written anything. It was a girl who sang popular songs & rdquor ;. Serrat confesses. “When I saw her, I fell in love with her,” he says, and jokes: “But she was Joan Ramon’s sister and I had to behave.”
Serrat was the 13th ‘jutge’ and Bonet went to Barcelona, to settle in the house of Lluís Serrahima and Remei Margarit. Encouraged by Josep Maria Espinàs, she became the 14th ‘jutgessa’. “And some of my first songs, like ‘No trobaràs la mar’, are heavily influenced by Joan Manuel& rdquor ;, reveals. Over the years, this song would be adapted by Serrat, who very recently, at his concert last summer in Palma, invited Bonet to sing his ‘Cançó de l’amor petit’ with him and to see them, for the first time in public, with ‘La Balanguera’. The official anthem of Mallorca. “And, for me, of all the Catalan Countries & rdquor ;, she adds.
country of troubadours
The university distinction is, for both, an indicator that the official culture “opens up to other forms of knowledge,” reflects Serrat. “And it is my university too, where I spent some very important years of my life& rdquor;, points out in reference to his time as a Biology student. Days in which she debated between the classrooms and the stages, and she decided to “take the testimony & rdquor; of those who had coined “a way of singing and making songs& rdquor ;. because this is “a country of artists, minstrels and troubadours”, he feels “part of a chain”.
A tradition that has lost centrality and we don’t know how it will evolve? “We don’t know anything,” Serrat muses. “No one can be sure where anything is going overall. What we are sure of is the speed at which everything moves.” The work of singer-songwriters, he adds, “was closely linked to words and language,” and could have been developed in its day “in connection with classical music, because it incorporated people who came out of conservatories.”
industry of the profitable
And now? “The music you hear now on the radio is very segmented: the 70s, the 90s, the most recent… I wouldn’t even call the industry a musical industry, but a commercial industry, what is profitable& rdquor;. Maria del Mar Bonet points out that Serrat and she lived in more propitious times for the dissemination of their songs. “There was a response from the media and extensive programs on radio and television & rdquor ;.
But the catastrophic diagnosis does not correspond. “In the same way that I hope that certain discredited values of society will be reversed, I hope that music will be vindicated throughout history, and without prejudice to anyone& rdquor ;, meditates Joan Manuel Serrat, who, Although he points out that “there is a great distance from a reggaeton to Beethoven’s Fifth”, he later corrects it to qualify his words. “If in what I have said there can be some prejudice against reggaeton, I have expressed myself badly. At the time, also the chachachá or the cumbia must have caused strong shocks& rdquor;.
an indisposed guitar
The concerts of Serrat’s farewell at the Palau Sant Jordi, the last December. Very intense, “because each song that was ending was one song less& rdquor ;. Emotions on stage “are wonderful and, at the same time, a terrible enemy, because acting can get out of hand.” Was it about to happen at the end of the last recital, when she tackled that baptismal song, ‘Una guitarra’, alone? “Something happened that you wish never happened: the guitar was not in tune & rdquor;, is still surprised. “I was so concerned with changing it quickly that I didn’t have time to think about other things, but I was able to get the chords done right. In the end, the feeling was ‘okay, sit back and enjoy’.
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The final dedication, that night, to three missing friends was significant: Salvador Escamilla (“Thanks to him, in my beginnings, when I didn’t even have a record, I had a radio to go sing on& rdquor ;, he explains), Quico Sabate (“Thirty years working with me, great support & rdquor;) and Joan Olle, a figure whose final stretch of life, marked by accusations of sexual abuse, inspires bitter thoughts in him. “A friend who was mistreated and sentenced without even being tried, because, although there were statements and demonstrations asking for his head, no one came to file a complaint against him.”
Maria del Mar Bonet continues on a roll, from stage to stage, after her latest album with the Valencian Borja Penalba, while Serrat got out of it, although he confirms that one day or another there will be new songs of his authorship. “In the short term it will not be. calmly. I do not know when. I still have a lot of paper to throw away & rdquor ;, he jokes. Whatever it is, both troubadours will wear the mandatory mortarboard this Monday, we don’t know if with a tassel and fringes, within the university framework. Symbol of an art and a trade that, for them, does not contemplate concessions, as Serrat slips. “Neither Maria del Mar nor I have stopped doing what we liked to do, and always with our ears open to what moved us.”