It had to be his great celebration, 25 years of Roger Mas’s musical career at the Grec. But he rained. But it was. It was five minutes after 10 pm when it was still not known if the rain would prevent the concert. Mas went on stage, with instruments and amplifiers covered in protective plastic, without an audience, to play a few chords of I la pluja es va assecar, to scare away the clouds.
“Good night, brave ones!” Ovation. 10:42 p.m. And she started. And it is that the boy who made songs with his guitar, who met a musician who lived next door to his house, who recorded an album alone in a half-demolished farmhouse, who set up a band, who made an album a little closer to the machines and another to pop, and one to Verdaguer and then with a cobla, and then alone, unredeemed, and what if the poets… and Totes les flors, the eleventh album… celebrated 25 years on stage. A time when he has defined the guidelines of the genre in Catalan in the 21st century with his most outstanding and recognizable voice.
Mas began by remembering his musician grandfather, first, and then his beginnings, with Luis Paniagua, “my teacher”, who came out to accompany him on the gatham (Indian percussion) on his first hit, Llums de colors, which earned him the Èxit award. of TV3 and laid the first stone. He continued a historical review, in the chronological and tremendous sense, with constant emotion. Les Flors (Pac Ferrer, Fermí Garriga and Joan Ridao) came out to play Les maragdes and Volant, a song with which he has closed concerts for years. This time he continued, with an emotional tribute to Pau Riba, with part of his ashes inside a walnut and, now, yes, the feather is going to dry.
With the Brossa Quartet came the romantic moment with Canterbury, with a final kiss to his wife, Michela. The pop moment, with L’home elefant, and Verdaguer, with the memory of Les cançons tellúrics and Ivan Dach …
Another intense moment was one of his favorite songs, El Dolor de la Bellesa, with a monologue included, which sounded for the first time as he had imagined it: with the Cobla Sant Jordi, the Cor Lupulus Emsembla, the Quartet Brossa and Xavier Guitó (right hand musical for years) on piano, Arcadi Marcet on double bass and Pinyu Martí on drums. And with ovations in the middle of the song, and at the end. The emotion, we said.
And more songs and guests, Dani Ruíz (bass) and Oriol Roca (drums), Jordi Molina on tenor, David Carabén, Míriam Encinas (the multi-instrumentalist incorporated in recent years), Núria Graham, Bikimel, dancer Anna Rubio, Maria del Mar Bonet and Quico Pi de la Serra.
In the end, Mas, alone on stage with his guitar, Under a thin layer of ash, so far and so close to that young man who began with his “colored lights, stars in the sky, bouquets of flowers, jars of honey.” The music kept the clouds at bay. Forward, yes, flying.
Catalan version, here
