"I want to commemorate fifty songs on the album, update fifty years, but anthology was messed "
Half a century has passed since Joan Manuel Serrat debuted with his guitar in a Catalan radio program named "Radioscope". By then he was 21, he studied agronomy and his passion was to write songs. Over time college stayed in the past and music and poetry became almost rationale. Then he composed hymns as Mediterraneo, he created music for poets like Antonio Machado and Miguel Hernandez and became a voice of cultural resistance.
" What remains from that boy is a fond memory. I share a relationship with what I was, but I hope that in life these fifty years have served me to do things that leave me elsewhere, "says Serrat in Buenos Aires, where he has arrived as part of an extensive tour to celebrate this birthday with music and the release of his new album: Antología desordenada.
The Nano speaks in a press conference with about twenty journalists from several Latin American media. After the questions he looks back on his life and thinks aloud: "You are walking and hanging and picking up things from trees you find, making your own way."
And that walk by many paths, to open many sidewalks, navigate seas and dock hundred riversides paraphrasing the poem "I have walked many paths" by Antonio Machado, with music by Serrat, made possible the recording of a bunch of fifty of his songs with several brothers of music of different generations and around the world.
"On this album I tried not to summarize anything. I want to commemorate fifty songs, to update these fifty years. This is my choice, but everyone makes his own anthologies of songs "he said about Anthologia desordenada. "The anthology was messed up because I could not find a way to do it. Any kind of order had been opposed to what an album is required. I order the songs taking into account the tempo, melody. Is incompatible to order it with dates. I want to do it so it has life. "
"It would have been easy to globalizing them [to the public], but I preferred to put up them with some new recordings' Serrat said, stressing that his desire was never to make a compilation. "I wanted them to sound with the voice of today. This took time and work, as anything you want to do:if you want to develop vocation,you have to use it. Everything I have discovered was by doing it. Whatever the thing you want to do , artistically speaking it needs a dose of talent, but also large doses of work. Talent as itself does not go anywhere. Of course is not rewarding to recommend people to work in order to get things, but hey, it is what it is (laughs). "
The new album features collaborations of friends like Silvio Rodriguez, Pablo Milanes, Les Luthiers, Ruben Blades, Joaquin Sabina, Leon Gieco, Adriana Varela, Fito Paez, Calle 13, Luis Eduardo Aute, Celeste Carballo, Alejandro Sanz and Maria Bethania, among many others.
When we specifically asked him about the participation of Silvio in the song Lucia and the one by Pablo Te guste o no, he said he was very grateful and excited, and talked about his relationship with music and Cuban artists: "While on this record there are two Cubans, there could have been many more. My friendship with Cuban artists is not limited only to the trova, but also to a lot of musicians before and after my generation. Cuba is one of the places in the world where there is a density of artists per meter square higher than the rest of mankind ".
"Each [Silvio and Pablo] made the song I asked them to do and how I asked them to do. Maybe Pablo was the one who was most demanded, because he had to deal with an arrangement already made to Te guste o no. And also, he was about to be operated and put all his efforts to do this work before entering the operating room.
He was very generous. And I think that Silvio has done a really wonderful version of Lucia. It is a song accompanied with one guitar and two voices. It is a delicacy as the one Silvio usually have. Now, in this case,I feel more excited when taking an old song and put all that flavor and simplicity that characterizes him. I am grateful to both of them. "
At the age of 71, and carrying his story, Joan Manuel Serrat said that he will not retire from the stage and, at this stage of his fruitful life, he tries to avoid the useless, the superfluous. "I use the time I have left the best possible way. And how I use it depends on every day. There are pleasures to which I will never give up: the investment in time spent living in a manner consistent with society, with my family and with my need to love and be loved. And leaving some time to football, of course "
