MUSIC: Serrat is Big Box Office

By Estrella Gutiérrez Reprint | | Print |

Estrella Gutierrez

CARACAS, Feb 11 1997 (IPS) - Spanish singer and songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat has been delighting devoted fans in Venezula this month with his “Birds Eye View,” series of concerts – featuring his 33 years of music and 300 songs of nostalgia and intimacy.

He also teamed up with the Venezuelan singer Simon Diaz for a series country and western numbers – “Cabello viejo” (Old horse), “Sabana” (Sheet) and others. On following nights, Serrat sang the same songs alone, dressed in the “liquiliqui” – the traditional Venezuelan outfit – given to him as a present by Diaz.

Serrat, now 53-years-old, returned to the Caribbean basin with 30 hit records behind him for an end of the century performance, which he described as a balance of accounts between the social and personal aspects of his music.

His three recitals were sold out days before the performances took place, and Serrat showed enormous freshness through his more universal songs, without forgetting his Catalan roots and other songs showing his affection for Latin America.

He even sang “Senora” (Lady), a song which he had not played for a long time which he described as “one of those suits that you keep in your wardrobe even though you never use it, not because the suit is old, but because you have became too old for the suit.”

Serrat and his back-up musicians from Venezuala and Uruguay and together wove a two-and-a-half hours tribute “to life, love and freedom.” It was an imtimate series of songs for an audience, most of whom had grown up along with Serrat and his works but which included a fair share of new adolescent devotees.

He thanked his faithful followers for allowing him to do what he liked best: composing and singing. “If it were not for all of you I would have had no other choice than to go out to work,” he said.

When he sang “Para la libertad” (for liberty), a poem by Miguel Hernandez who died in a prison under the Franco regime in Spain, he stressed that there and over here “there still is not too much liberty – even now.”

With “Nino silvestre” (Wild child), he described the misery of the children who work the streets and criticised those who only have use for children “whole or in pieces” according to their economic interests.

“Now is not the time for ideologies or talent. It is the era of figures, that’s what counts,” he said , and startled the audience by lisiting some of these: 40,000 children each day dying from preventable diseases, and the “death squads” which in Brazil alone have killed at least 7,000 children.

“Most of the world’s children are poor and most of the poor are children,” he said.

In total, Serrat presented sang some 30 songs and poems, not in chronological order or with “anthological pretentions,” but which were meant to “lead to reconciliation with life and to maintain utopia,” so that life is more than just a matter of waiting for death.

Perhaps the most exceptional moment of all Serrat’s concerts was his surprise in the duet with Diaz, the greatest current exponent of Venezuelana music, famous for the now universal “Caballo viejo.”

Serrat was accompanied by a musician playing the ‘cuatro’ ( a small four-string guitar) in what appeared as homage to the Venezuelans and their music, which began with “Sabana,” a cowboy song, until the old author of the song came in from the wings dressed in his ‘liquiliqui.’

The pair lauched into a “contrapunteo” (a spontaneous duet form typical of the plans, where each singer answers the other) followed by “La vaca mariposa” (The butterfly cow), another Diaz number.

“What I experienced that night I will carry with me when I die,” said Serrat, adding that he hoped this would be a long way off, “because I’m nowhere near ready for it yet.”