Each recital is a farewell, and those of these days take place in more and more familiar landscapes, stirring sensations and memories. Some days ago, Serrat sang for the last time in Mallorca, the scene of so many youthful troubles, with Maria del Mar Bonet as a guest, and this Saturday he ended up in another place closely linked to his career, the Peralada Festival, also here with a friendly voice, the Israeli singer Notin the first Catalan station of the tour ‘The vice of singing 1965-2022’.
The emotion floated in the atmosphere, but Serrat knew how to handle it with good humor and a playful smile as soon as he went on stage, with open arms, crossing a theatrical red velvet curtain, to sing ‘temps was temps’theme with sentimental memory and views of Elena Francis, ‘take it or leave it’ and the formation courses of the National Spirit. But he wanted to make sure that we all put aside “melancholy, nostalgia and any feeling of this kind & rdquor ;, since we were “at a farewell party, yes, but a party & rdquor ;. And the past is no more, she came to say. “From now on, we only have the future & rdquor ;.
a bit of black humor
It was a recital in which we took things easy, hanging around the two and a half hours of songs and thoughts out loud. A certain liturgy in the air, with respectful silences and the absence of loud mobiles, extremely rare in a current concert. On the other hand, Serrat was not particularly circumspect, but rather he joked with his stage goodbye and he even had a black humor when he advised us to keep the tickets. “In anticipation that, due to what could happen, we would not reach the end & rdquor; (from tour), he slipped her. “They will always be able to say: ‘I saw how it fell’&rdquor ;.
Looking back continued with ‘Cançó de bressol’, the tribute to his mother, the Aragonese, from Belchite, Ángeles Teresa, and with ‘El carrusel del Furo’, another family wink, this one in honor of his maternal grandfather, Manuel, murdered in 1938. Very real characters, in contrast to others, emerged from the mind of its author, whom he wanted to thank. “They are not true or false, but fantasies or drops of reality, or perhaps the other way around & rdquor ;. He alluded there to ‘The woman I love’ (which he did not sing) to remember that, in reality, “he did not bathe in holy water, but in ‘gin and tonic’ & rdquor ;.
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More classics of classics: ‘Romance de Curro ‘El Palmo”, a piece steeped in the imagery of the copla, and the sarcastic ‘Señora’. The greater weight of the songs in Catalan marked the difference with other concerts on the tour, and there were other pieces such as ‘Seria fantàstic’ and the distant ‘Me’n vaig a peu’, a song in which a twentysomething Serrat conveyed his decision to embark on his path, however steep it might be. And ‘La tieta’, an example of his early gift for portraiture that is both tender and hyper-realistic.
Next to him, a band of seven musicians with two teachers on each flank, on keyboards, Ricard Miralles and Josep Mas ‘Kitflus’. Close accomplices, as were others he wanted to remember, such as the disappeared Josep Maria Bardagí, Juan Carlos Calderón and Francesc Burrull. More sibylline humour: “I have worked with a lot of people, even live arrangers!”. Like Joan-Albert Amargós, he added ‘Algo personal’ before starting the song. And among his many collaborators, voices like Noa, with whom he shared ‘Es capricious el hazard’ and ‘Tú y yo’.
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Serrat has classics to fill several concerts (on the tour he handles a repertoire of about 70 songs), and in the advanced bars of the night gestures towards Miguel Hernández (‘Para la libertad’) and Antonio Machado (‘Cantares’) ), the always full ‘Mediterráneo’ and the youthful ‘Paraules d’amor’. Not without first underlining that this It was not a night of sorrows or tears on the back of ‘Fiesta’, with its message of celebration over social and ideological distances, leaving a profitable wake in the night of Peralada.