After 32 years of dedicating himself to music, but especially to the music of others, Borja Penalba (València, 1975) debuts with a solo album, Giròvag (Blau-Discmedi) and a presentation concert at Barnasants, this Thursday at Paral·lel 62 (9 p.m.). After having played with musicians such as Lluís Llach, Maria del Mar Bonet (with whom he signed an album in progress and still has performances pending), Feliu Ventura, Miquel Gil, Mireia Vives – with whom he also shared Ovidi 4, with David Fernàndez and David Caño and in recent times Toti Soler – or Obrint Pas was added to them, he does not jump into the void, because “I am already old and I have lived twenty lives, or thirty, or forty, and I have been passing through screens”, as he himself explains .
“Some time ago they began to tell me that I would have to do something alone, but I couldn’t find the time or the motivation in the different vital moments that I have lived,” says Giròvag to present, which for him more than an album is “taking the last step , defend a project and get rid of the discomfort of being able to show all the faces of that polyhedron that we all are.” After having always been “accompanying or behind an instrument, now I can act as a clown, move, open my eyes, because I always play with my eyes closed.” For the Valencian musician, it is not just an album: “It is the beginning of my latest project, my life project, until I get tired or get tired.”
For the concert, Penalba wanted to make a great display, as he did in December at the Principal Theater in Valencia, and twelve musicians will accompany him on stage: in addition to drums (Josep Bas), bass/double bass (Alas Cesarini) and piano and keyboards (Vicent Colonques), there will be trios of backup singers (Tere Núñez, also on minor percussion, Josep Maria Zapater who will add guitars, and Noèlia Pérez), strings (Ana Requena and Miguel Ángel López on violin and Yolanda Bueso on cello) and of winds (Eva Garín on trombone, Maria Puertas on helicón and Paula Carrillo on tenor sax). “She will be a mascletà, and I am from Carme and if we know anything, it is that.”
“For me it was essential to present it in the Principat within the framework of Barnasants, because it is the greatest ally of the author’s song of the Catalan Countries for 29 years,” says the singer-songwriter, and the director of the festival, Pere Camps, insists on that it will be an exceptional concert, which “has been possible due to the sum of effort and complicity, while its manager, Yanni Munujos, assures that “it is not just about militancy, but about believing in the concept of a song.”
The album includes sixteen cuts, among which we go from the solitude of the guitar and voice to the reminiscence of the cabaret, with short and tender pieces such as Sam, dedicated to a daughter, which lasts just one minute, or the narrative Et in Arcadia Ego , in which in more than seven minutes he explains a story that he was told and that is related to a deceased authority in his city, which he does not explain but which he hopes that when the song is heard the dots will be connected. There is also space for the musicization of poems by authors such as Ventura Ametller, Marià Villangómez, Joan Fuster, Bertolt Brecht or Joanjo García, in addition to the collaboration of Roc Casagran and the tribute to a poet friend who was the origin of the album, Manel Marí: “The first idea was to set music to his book Tavernàries (Bromera, 2016), but I realized that it would be too nocturnal and I wanted there to be more light on the first album, but I did want it to be present.” “Some songs are 10 years old, others are 5, others are about a minute and a half long, and the others – he composed a forty – I will release them over time.”
Penalba says that in music “I have never looked for anything, it has gone like this, it has been accident after accident, a permanent serendipity,” because “I didn’t even want to be a musician,” but now he will be able to transmit “my own vision of the world and also denounce and laugh, with a vocation for service to find usefulness in what I do.” As he sings in Viu: “He nascut, he viscut… i val la pena” (“I have been born, I have lived… and it is worth it”).
Catalan version, here
