WE CONTINUE NEEDING SONGS OF NOW. -

When in the distance of the first years sixty, Lluís Serrahima published their article - Ens calen cançons d´ara (we need songs of now) - that it was the unquestionable starting point of a civic-musical movement without a doubt that more late it would transform into what called you Nova Catalan Cançó that later on was mirror of other movements like the Castilian song, the Basque one and even the New Cuban Trova.
But soon after article a series of citizens liberal professionals of middle class they had the success to begin a hard articulation task in base to the already mentioned article.. Josep María Espinàs, writer, Miquel Porter i Moix, bookseller, and expert in cinema, Delfí Abella, psychiatrist, they met, they conversed and other artists that sings in Catalan looked for fervently - and all this during the darkest years in Franco's régime -, in a gray Barcelona inside a half dead Catalunya, without arms and with a scarce real capacity of answer. And they left this way creating the bases of what you/they would be Els Setze Jutges. (sixteen judges, well-known Catalan proverb)
But meanwhile, we had received in the distance the echoes of a voice for time
of València that screamed To the vent, (to the wind), he sang the hopes and the little faith cried, he regretted the dark night of the dictatorship and he/she reminded us, with their vehement voice that, indeed, we were not of that world. (nosaltres no sóm d´eixe món.)
Joan Manuel Serrat, Lluís Llach, Ovidi Montllor, Quico Pi de la Serra and so many and so many good singers went appearing, each one with their mood and they united and they were articulated according to the initial spirit that they designed the pioneer ones and they rebelled this way with those
only weapons that prepared, the guitar, the voice and the Catalan language for vehicle.
They could overcome all type of obstacles, the censorship and the constant prohibitions, and
little by little they ended up having their own diffusion channels.
Very soon that entire commotion became one it authenticates civic catharsis in
the fight for the individual and collective freedoms and for the recognition to the right to the difference.
There where they went they filled the theaters and rooms, even outside of the limits of Catalunya and of the area of the Catalan Countries (the whole geographical environment of Catalan language) how
Madrid, Paris, etc.
The dark, dark night she went clarifying and suddenly some small rays of light
they illuminated our life, it seemed that i began our democracy we received it to dawn. All of a sudden it was thought that those that, to their way but with so much effectiveness,
they had fought now for the rights and freedoms they were no longer necessary.
Now we are in the year 2002, the Catalan song lies counterfeited in the darkest catacombs in our democracy that it levies us. We continue needing songs of now, songs that you/they speak to each other of the modern, anxious man's solitude and caught in a spiral hang-over of hurries, anguishes, rarities and
you doubt, but also of hopes, songs that you/they speak to each other of the immense solitude
of our dear Catalan language that remains sick and half lost under
the unbearable pressure of the imperialistic languages and the states that support them.
To the language, the culture, the song, the identity, we must defend them with the fingernails and with
the teeth, to blows of rage but also with illusion, very happy of to know who are and what we want.
Without a doubt we will get it.


Antoni García Iranzo