When Joan Manuel Serrat first landed in Argentina, at the end of that effervescent year of 1969, he was no stranger to his country where his first albums and especially the tribute to Antonio Machado had already brought him rapid popularity.
Serrat also had his share of audacity for the decision to sing in Catalan at the Eurovision Song Contest: it provoked the retaliation and the prohibition of the Franco regime.
Legend indicates that the first of Joan Manuel Serrat’s managers around here, Alfredo Capalbo (the same that decades later would make history managing the Queen’s visit), had a hard time putting it on television, almost exclusive platform for fame in those days. He had to convince the “Tsar” Alejandro Romay, but he succeeded.
And as soon as Serrat debuted in one of the most impactful programs, such as Saturdays of kindness on Channel 9, which was driving Hector Coire (following an interview with Hugo Guerrero Martinitz and presentation to Circular Saturday with Pippo Mancera), a couple of songs were enough to conquer the audience.
Now, Joan Manuel Serrat begins the Argentine part of her farewell show “El vice de cantar”. It will start on 5 November in Rosario, on 8 November it will be at the Kempes stadium in Córdoba; and on November 19th, 20th, 25th, 26th and 29th he will perform at the Movistar Arena, in the city of Buenos Aires.
The beginning of an endless love story
In that year 1969 a love story was born between Serrat and the Argentines that would never end. swept away Your name tastes like weed to me and no political difference or allusion prevented the young Catalan, in a jacket and shirt, long hair and sideburns, with flashy faces, from immediately becoming an idol.
At the same time, according to writer Juan Cruz, “what he saw there made the young Serrat infatuated. In love with what he saw and what he fantasized about. This caused a very close relationshipa concrete warmth, like new home on the other side of the world. He spent a lot of time in these new territories and those he met discovered things that interested him and that he felt close to ”.
What was surprising was that Serrat entered that popularity through an unexplored passage by songwriters.
Let’s go back in time, the same as the Cordobazo and the student riots: national rock was just emerging and Palito Ortega, Sandro and Leonardo Favio they mobilized mass music with a style that – from critical circles – could indicate it as “commercial”, but which each of those idols knew how to transcend in their travels. They attracted crowds, especially during the February carnivals.
Serrat quickly gained the same number of followers, but with a different repertoire. At that time he felt “a troubadour”, in the style of the French tradition or one who – among us – was linked to folklore referents: Atahualpa Yupanqui, Jorge Cafrune and even Eduardo Falú, whom he highlighted in his first visits .
However, more closely in time and in an interview with the magazine No.he recalled that “my cultural base goes through popular music, the copla, the bolero, the tango. And I was also influenced by Bob Dylan, the Beatles. Everything you listen to influences you, what enters the intertwining of your soul ”.
Own style, without stereotypes
But his music had nothing to do with what is known here and his poetry – his and the musical set – was a revelation.
At the same time, in harmony with the dizzying and violent political changes in the country, the “protest song” was booming and some tried to pigeonhole Serrat over there. And while there has never been any doubt about his commitment to the noblest causes, the truth is that Serrat hasn’t fallen into political or cultural stereotypes and dogmatism either.
The Serrat of those first summers and of the many tours that would be repeated in the new decade, combined the hysterical idolatry of girls like “Beatlemania” with the admiration that her poetry aroused. And she has reached a higher dimension.
How much do our literature teachers owe you for the rediscovery of Antonio Machado or José Hernández, at the levels of popularity that the songs set to music by Serrat have given them?
“Sing, Flaco Serrat,” he asked Horace Ferrer in one of the first interviews for the magazine People, where he immediately noticed the identification that the young man who came out of the Poble Sec district of Barcelona would have had with the Argentine costumes. “The soul of a poor farmer and the destiny of a fisherman without a boat, but with the talent of a troubadour”, he described it.
Serrat himself confessed to Ferrer: “Buenos Aires is full of Spain. So I find myself in Buenos Aires with Madrid or with my Barcelona, a little Paris and a little Rome ”. the author of Ballad for a madman He concluded: “And you are, besides, the skinny guy who drinks that Scottish wiscacho at noon under this Buenos Aires sun from Pueyrredón and Beruti.”
Another Argentine
From those youthful visits, Joan Manuel Serrat has become an Argentine again, a feeling that the long exiles have not broken: what he himself suffered for his Catalan homeland – the Francoist persecution in the 1970s – and what he suffered. between us, when the dictatorship prevented his visit and censored his works.
But the “Nano” had struck a chord among the Argentines that someone like Manuel Vázquez Montalbán had already identified among his people: “Serrat is above all for his ability to identify with people, knows how to connect the most intimate feelings of the man in the street“.
And from those early tours, from that nobility and quality it has maintained for more than half a century, Serrat’s lyrics have been part of the everyday language and the entire life of generations of Argentines. How many “Lucia” and how many “Penelopi” were born among us?
Curiously, Penelope was born from an association of Serrat with another virtuoso like Augusto Algueró who, through the work of Nino Bravo, popularized Noelia.
Serrat’s lyrics have become part of our customs: Today could be a great daythe “little fools”, “the truth is never sad / what has no remedy”, “those little things,” one of the two Spaniards, your heart must freeze “” what will become of you, away from home “, “There is something personal between those guys and me” … How many Alberto uncles do we find in each of our families?
A tour, in a complicated political context
The tour at the beginning of ’72 – “Serratist Sycosis”, entitled at the time Chronicle– There would remain a synthesis of those times: five recitals at the Opera and three at the Hermitage of Mar del Plata, presentations at the carnivals of San Lorenzo and Gimnasia y Esgrima de Rosario, inevitable radio and TV and, in the meantime, a show for the workers of Chocón, in Neuquén.
By then he had also enjoyed himself at Luna Park, the first of his great stadiums in the American landing. “I had sung in important stadiums in Europe, but the Luna was the first in America. There the bond with the public is different, but what excites me most is the silence ”, he recalled.
It all happened in a complicated political context, when bombs on both sides were inevitable and one of them, at the Opera, threatened Serrat himself in ’72.
Two years later, they went from threat to direct action, many of our leading artists took the path of exile and Serrat, who could not present For the apple peel– was one of many silenced by the dictatorship.
Paradoxically, four decades of Francoist repression ended at that time, freedom illuminated Spain and it was the rebirth of Joan Manuel Serrat in his own land.
return to democracy
For Argentina, Serrat’s return in winter ’83 – when the dictatorship left – was another event with a series of shows at the Gran Rex and new appearances at the Luna Park, on the occasion of the releases of To each his own theme Y In transit.
That time he felt overwhelmed by such euphoria and the journalist Mona Moncalvillo told it in the magazine Humor: “What is happening is like a tangle of emotions, affections, disappointments, illusions, very different hopes. All these situations need rest …
And he continued: “I’m back a country that obviously suffers from a very specific anguish that is pouring out on me, together with all the tenderness and affections. This does not lead to a normal situation, nor does it allow – at least it does not allow me – to put myself in a situation of equilibrium ”.
Even when you like the creations Mediterranean it will be insurmountable Serrat’s connection with his audience, and in particular with Argentina, has withstood the passage of time. And she has embraced several generations.
There have been new big parties – five years ago he summoned 80,000 people near the Delta, vibrated other big stadiums from Bombonera to Atlanta, from Arroyito to Banfield – but he also sang on the solemnity of the Teatro Colón and renewed that history of love year after year in the theaters of our cities.
The presence of its artistic director, Ricard Miralles, the collaborations with other great contemporary songwriters, his fellow adventurers (Ana Belen, Sabina, Victor Manuel) and the recognition of the Argentines were part of that journey.
And much more: the friendship of many cultural references, the nocturnal and beautiful adventures of Buenos Aires, the inevitable football as a shared heart between Barca and Boca, Maradona and Messi – for which he claimed the renewal to Barcelona in a public letter– and as a follower of Menotti’s style, another friend of his. That saga and its many stories can be found in a multiple bibliography, the most recent Serrato in Argentinawritten by Tamara Smerling.
One server and one more porteño
“I am one more porteño” stated the “Nano” and it was not a pose, nor a demagogic touch, but a feeling that we all interpret.
During the broadcast of his farewell tour, the current one, Juan Cruz reminded him that “in what Serrat composed, there is also our own life, that of subsequent generations up to today’s teenagers. And all their songs are our songs and also the events that happened to us while we listened to them and hummed them ”.
Fernando Navarro, a Villagewrote at the same time that Serrat “is a giant who has walked a lifetime and now wants to rest, even if his songs will continue to lead us to ourselves”.
“A server, Joan Manuel Serrat, married, of age, introduced himself to To whom It May Concern.
Perhaps Serrat alludes, in its simplicity, to other unforgettable verses of Machado: “And when the day of the last voyage arrives / and the ship that will never return is about to leave, / you will find me on board with a light luggage, / almost naked, like the children of the sea ”.
With a hint of nostalgia, emotion or wisdom, many will remember the Serrat which, until yesterday and for so long, made us live the Fiesta. Like no other.
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Source: Clarin
