“Changing rock, jazz and salsa for tradition was a logical evolution”

2023-11-16 06:59:12

“People have been telling me since day one: ‘it sounds old, but it’s very modern.’ And that’s because my backpack is modern.” assures Eliseo Parra, one of the reference artists in traditional Spanish music. Since the end of the 70s, the name of Eliseo Parra has been linked to rock, jazz, salsa and original song projects, from Mi Generación to Orquestra Plateria and Al Tall, through collaborations with artists such as Ovidi Montllor, Marina Rossel or Sisa. It was Maria del Mar Bonet, however, who made him discover folklore, bringing him closer to a type of music of which he has become one of the greatest exponents, both as a musician and as a researcher. This Saturday he performs at the Càntut festival in Cassà de la Selva, in his last concert in Catalonia, the land where he became a musician.

Born in a town in Valladolid, Parra moved to Barcelona with his family at the age of fourteen, and it was there that he was introduced to the world of music, first with the group Mi Generación and later with La Rondalla de la Costa , La Sonora Catalana or La Murga, within Ona Laietana, the movement linked to the Zeleste room. In parallel, he began to work with many singer-songwriters, until the disc Earth sapwith Maria del Mar Bonet, changed his life. “The album was all traditional Mallorcan songs, and I freaked out there. She and later Agapito Marezuela in Segovia are the two characters who made me focus on the greatness of traditional music”, says the musician.

“What attracted me the most was the singing”, continues Eliseo Parra, who he sees the transition from modern to traditional music as a natural leap: “changing rock, jazz and salsa for tradition was a logical evolution, I felt it as a search for authenticity”.

A transfer to Madrid in 1983 took him to doing field work throughout the State, traveling for ten years through the peninsula and the Canary Islands in search of traditional music, conversing mainly with women, the guardians of the legacy. “Being at the home of these people who opened the door for me and sang to me and explained things to me was definitive for me”, he continues.

“It’s impressive what you learn by talking to people, it makes you see where we come from and how people used to live, because they sang for everything, to play, to cook… you can’t live without music, and now it’s the same, but you put on your headphones and you don’t make it, you just listen to it», he states.

Learn by listening

“I am very proud to have done so many things before, because it has given me an impressive breadth of views”, says Eliseo Parra, who learned the music of the oral tradition from songbooks, but especially from recordings. «You learn by listening, as it has always been learned: see, listen and try to imitate. The first time I go to Peñaparda, in Salamanca, and I see a group of women playing the square tambourine I hallucinate, I am a musician and it was impossible to know the beat. And you can’t ask either, because they don’t know either, they’ve seen it all their lives and done it that way,” he explains.

Jobs like Hispanic tribespublished in 1998, they assumed the definitive consolidation of a way of doing things that has created a school among musicians like Rodrigo Cuevas or Rozalén, who claim it.

“I don’t really realize the impact, because I’m not looking for it, but that’s fine. I have discovered the world that I discovered with the women in the villages and when you put this music in value you realize that it is very great. A woman playing with a pan and a spoon, which is as I have seen them, is of indisputable value. When you see that this works and that you can recreate this music so that it doesn’t die, people freak out,” he points out.

The future, of course, “is for young people to take over”. “What happens is that, when it comes to presenting it to the public, you either get it right or you don’t… and there are some mixes that are too mechanical for my taste”, he jokes. «This takes away from the essence, because for me there are a couple of rules that cannot be changed: the rhythm and the soul of the songwhat does it say, why it was used and how it was sung”, continues a musician who has sung in Spanish, Catalan, Basque or Galician.

Cantut and júgut: the Cassà festival focuses on game songs

Parra says goodbye to the stage, but not to music, because he wants to keep releasing recordswith the presentation of Diachronica self-published work that collects songs recovered from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s that he had played live but never recorded, in addition to new compositions and traditional themes, sung by artists such as Sílvia Pérez Cruz, Judit Neddermann or Rozalén.

In Càntut, go ahead, Catalan and Spanish will be the predominant languages, so that people are encouraged to sing a repertoire that he has structured like a cycle of life, from nursery songs to wedding songs, including play and work songs.