Joan Manuel Serrat: The man who sings leaves; but Serrat stays | List of culture codes

The man who sang this Wednesday at the WiZink Center in Madrid left around 11:30 p.m. He was wearing a green patterned jacket, a black shirt, and jeans. He left with a mutis, almost without saying goodbye, he left the feeling that at any moment he was going to return, wrapped in the red velvet of the curtain that decorated the stage while he played. Party, the song with which Joan Manuel Serrat recently ended his concerts. The gentleman who smiled and joked like a naughty child, left and said goodbye. But Serrat, instead, stayed.

The man who sometimes posed as a singer-songwriter sang melodies from the Noi del Poble Sec, of course. But when we say his name, Serrat llano, we don’t usually refer only to a cantaor: we are talking about a complex network of identities mixed between the Mediterranean and the Pacific, a paradigm of plurinational Spain and a Hispanic origin born in Catalonia. , rich, diverse and open to the world. That gibberish that paralyzes an entire political class but that instead has been able to solve on four strings. Also of a kiss, of a first love, of a loneliness broken into tears when rummaging through the closets and opening drawers. From the deviations of our intimacy and the sentimental education of several generations, linked between the groove of the record player, the cassette tapes and the control of the transmission.

All this jumble was felt by those attending the three successive concerts -on the 7th, 13th and 14th of this month- that have taken place in Madrid so that the one who sang Serrat said goodbye to the public and the public would definitely stay. To play with time, I started at the end and ended at the beginning. go Gotheme of Child of light and shadow (2010, his last album made up entirely of poems by Miguel Hernández in his second work on the poet) opened the concert and Party, a song from 1970, closed it. In total 22 titles to review a career that has remained for life, for language, for music, for History. That is why Serrat has not left, nor has he retired, a lie, nor will he leave.

It remains in all of us as the resonance of a collective soul. This is how the Madrid public felt in silence when the man who sang to Serrat summoned childhood with My childhood, the furor carouseldedicated to his grandfather Manuel or to Lullabythat He evoked his mother. Not to mention the chill that followed her love songs, the volatile perfection of Lucy a Mrsposed as a hint to each mother-in-law who has cast poisonous looks at the son-in-law who did not see the height or with that novel in couplet that is the Romance of Curro the span. She included it in one of her least favorite albums (Juan Manuel Serrat, 1974), but just for that work of art it is worth it from top to bottom. your name tastes like grass It was one of the most popular and chance is whimsicalaccompanied by Úrsula Amargos, one of the most heartfelt.

Of course, the poets appeared at the concert, Miguel Hernández opened it with go GoThe man from Alicante also nurtured the night of shadow and living memory together with Alberto Cortez with the onion lullabies and stirred consciences to the rhythm of for Liberty. At that moment, the public became aware of the projections that accompanied the music in almost the entire concert. With good taste and transgressive sense, Boticelli shook hands, Leonardo da Vinci with the Gioconda fine-tuned, Michelangelo, Banksy and Picasso, perhaps for those who are asking for its annulment even in parliament, manipulating expert speeches in the year of its centenary, with all the cheap opportunism that defines them and without coming to the point.

The peaceful sense of existence was accompanied by the environmentalism to which Serrat and the man who sang as soon as they arrived appealed. Stop Y Mediterranean. Afterwards, the two encouraged the audience to sing Those little things, a masterpiece of simplicity that connects Plato’s maxim -what is beautiful is difficult- with Machado. And precisely the Sevillian poet sang it afterwards whoever could, because at that point many people’s voices broke from crying so much. But that hymn to decency and the search that is sing It is not composed to be sung alone, since it is White town, further proof that Serrat will never be able to leave because he mutates permanently among us, be it through that landscape of emigration that he drew in notes and words 50 years ago and the present of empty Spain.

finally arrived Party, The man left, it seems that he took an AVE to Barcelona, ​​​​where they say that next week he will also say goodbye in body and will give his last concert on the 23rd. The band that has faithfully accompanied him remained on stage: Ricard Miralles and that piano with which he plays and dresses all the different songs every night. Josep Mas, alias Kitflus, on keyboards, David Palau (guitar), Úrsula Amargós (viola and voice), Vicente Climent (drums), Raimón Ferrer (double bass), José Miguel Pérez Sagaste (sax and clarinet). Of course, Serrat had been sneaking into the bodies of everyone present as part of our organism, to try to win the current battle of good against evil with his songs. Where the hell is he going to go, if not now, when we need him most?