It all started in 1963 sixty years ago. Raimon recorded his first song, Al vent, in Barcelona; a song that he composed three years earlier, on a motorcycle trip from Xàtiva to Valencia, and that would become a generational cry in the face of the repression of Francoism, although that was not the idea with which the singer created it.
“Al vent I did not think of it as a song against Francoism, but as a song that speaks of the idealistic rebellion in the face of adversity, of the need to move on, but in the end, in that context in which we lived, it fit with the need of rebellion of a society fed up with the dictatorship”.
In the same year, in 1963, Raimon prepared the music for a poem by Salvador Espriu, Cançó del capvespre, which would represent the beginning of a unique work of spreading the great Catalan and Valencian poets, from Espriu, Ausiàs March, Joan Roís de Corella to Jaume Roig or Bernat Metge, as examples. No one like Raimon has been able to make music and make known the high culture shared by Catalans and Valencians.
Raimon says that he discovered Salvador Espriu thanks to Joan Fuster. “Joan Fuster was preparing the prologue to Espriu’s poetic work and he told me to read it, from then on I was enthusiastic about it, and I even called him to tell him that I wanted to set some of his poems to music, he thought it was a good idea and we met; that conversation began at eight in the evening and ended at four in the morning; since then Espriu has been part of my work”.
In 1963 he would record his first album with Al vent, and the myth of Raimon would begin to be forged, with those recitals that are part of the memory in Barcelona, ??Madrid or Paris. Other songs like Diguem no or Jo vinc d’un silenci would forge the Raimon myth. Themes that over time have not aged. Al vent has also been covered by Catalan, Spanish, European and American singers and groups.
But in parallel, Raimon broadens his attention to poetry and pays attention to the creations of the 14th and 15th centuries “where the best poets were from Valencia,” he points out. The first, Ausias March. “Nobody talked about them, they didn’t know each other, I hadn’t studied them at school or in college, only those who studied medieval history; and they were enormous poets, admired by other great poets of their time throughout Europe.
The first poem he set to music was Veles e vents, in 1970. “It was not easy, due to the poem’s own structure, but it is so beautiful about what it speaks to us, how it establishes metaphors and how it defines an attitude and a feeling”, he adds . The song is today a reference not only to Raimon’s work, but also an example of the sophisticated and delicate capacity of the Valencian artist to sing to our poets, to make them reach the general public.
That today in the Valencian Community dozens of cultural centers, schools or even emblematic buildings have the name of Ausiàs March or that of his poem Veles e vents has a lot to do with Raimon’s work. But it’s just an example. The list is huge. Entire songs and records, with poems by Joan Roís de Corella (Si en lo mal temps), Joan Timoneda (So qui so) and Pere Quart (Una vaca amb un vedellet en braços) among many others.
An immense work in which all the great poets who have cemented Catalan and Valencian culture are present. “I always wanted to give our culture a social dimension, that went beyond the academic or scholarly sphere, and that people could not only get to know them, but also understand what contemporary poets and our classics whose creation is incomparable tell us and what they talk about. ”, he points out.
Raimon says that he feels happy when he sees that in sixty years Al vent continues to play and, even more, that many young people continue to listen to it, in the original version or performed by other singers or musical bands. “The first time I sang it live in a theater in Barcelona, ??people were surprised,” he recalls. It was Raimon’s scream, a generational scream, that would lift you out of your chair, unique. Something similar happened the first time the public heard Espriu, Ausiàs March, Pere Quart and many other poets sing. “These songs haven’t aged, I have,” he jokes. It all started in 1963, six decades ago.
