“I need a world that doesn’t exist / The world I dream of / Where the voice of my songs finds / spaces and silences / A world that shelters me and listens to me / I look for it, and I can’t find it!” These verses belong to the poem I am a woman: I was born a poet by Concha Espina, included in her novel the maragata sphinx, published in 1914. More than a century has passed since the writer published these lines but, unfortunately, they still resonate today. She is one of the protagonists of Invisible The Hatless 2the new album by Paco Damas in which he recovers texts by silenced authors, giving them a second life in the form of musical versions.
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The poet and composer from Jaén has rescued pieces by Zenobia Camprubí, Carmen de Burgos, María Lejárraga, Pilar de Valderrama, María Zambrano, María Teresa de León, Manuela López, Sagrario Torres, Concha Méndez, Concha Zardoya, Rosario Castellanos and the aforementioned Espina. For this he has been accompanied by artists such as Conchita, Estrella Morente, Nena Daconte, Vetusta Morla, Miguel Ríos, Julia Medina, Andrés Suárez, Pasión Vega and Belén Rueda.
It is the second album that the musician has released along these lines —seventh overall in his career—, after Paco Damas sings Las Sinsombrerowhich came to light in 2017. Both have been the result of laborious research work on the publications of these women who, as Damas explains to this newspaper, “did not have the opportunity” to see their talent recognized.
In addition to the themes, the volume includes a literary part with texts by Isabel Allende, Julia Navarro, Luis García Montero, Antonio Muñoz Molina and Rosa Montero, among others.
“The true history of Humanity is yet to be written. For a long time we believed that there were so few female references in our past due to the harsh conditions of discrimination that we women had to endure: without access to studies or work, without our own rights or power, it seemed understandable that we could not have done much thing”, expresses the last one, “but no, now we know that the truth is even worse: despite this brutal discrimination, thousands of them managed to do extraordinary things in all times and countries. And the problem is that a sexist story was in charge of forgetting them”.
But that’s not all. The project is completed by an educational platform directed by Luis Miguel Miñarro with activities for teachers to use in their classes. “We distributed 35,000 free copies of the previous album in schools,” he recalls. His approach to young people is expanded with, in addition to concerts for all audiences with which he has toured the country; didactic shows, whose demand has grown. “It’s a way of teaching them equality and literature through music,” he comments, “boys and girls usually arrive prejudiced thinking it’s going to be something boring, but then they’re surprised to see that we’re a whole pop band. I tell them anecdotes and they also sing some songs with me”.
Despite the fact that he considers that Secondary and Baccalaureate students are the ones who “can take the most advantage” of his work, being the ages in which literature is studied, he assures that it adapts “to all ages”. In fact, he recently performed at a center in Burgos for boys and girls from two to five years old; and later a group of twelve, who got to know the aforementioned authors through their compositions.
The poetesses with whom not even their partners counted
Before dedicating himself fully to music, Damas studied medicine, specializing in mental health. When she was finishing her specialty, she recorded a project and started acting. The composer considers that both facets converge: “What he did from the point of view of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis is not very far from what I do in my concerts. It has to do with a certain way of doing group therapy. It is helping others with emotions.”
Within his career, which started with his own compositions, there was a moment when poetry “crossed” his way. “I understood that I could take her to contemporary rhythms”, he recalls the origin of her records on names like Miguel Hernández, Juan Ramón Jiménez, Federico García Lorca and Antonio Machado.
The next step was to meet a group of female poets whom she did not know in 2011, a finding that she describes as “a shock”. “It was a literature of great height and with a very powerful personality. I closed myself in to investigate and look for his works, and I began to sing them”, adds Damas. “They were women who, due to the fact that they were women, were predestined by the corset of marriage, children and home. I was surprised by his literary height, his desire and empowerment to get out of there and vindicate himself “.
A year later he toured the country interpreting his texts and in 2017 he gave shape to the album Paco Damas sings Las Sinsombrero. In it he recovered works by poetesses from 1927 such as María Zambrano, Rosa Chacel, Ángela Figuera and Josefina de la Torre together with the voices of, among others, Rozalén, Roko, Carmen París and Marina Heredia.
“Many of them were companions of those artists who never took them into account,” he laments, “some were even couples. María Teresa de León, from Alberti, Concha Méndez, from Manuel de Altolaguirre, Maruja Mallo, from Miguel Hernández, Zenobia Camprubí, from Juan Ramón Jiménez… And they never counted on them, that what they did was help them to be very visible”. “We have always been sold that the poets of the Generation of ’27 were modern and progressive. Why didn’t they have them? Because they were as macho as the whole society. That’s called gender violence.”
Damas describes the case of María Lejárraga as “bleeding”: “She is an exceptional playwright. She wrote more than 90 works. In order for her to publish them, they had to be in the name of her husband, Gregorio Martínez Sierra. He separated and went with a lover, the singer Catalina Bárcenas; and all of Lejárraga’s rights went to her daughter that he had after her with her. María died destitute in Argentina and he enjoyed all the rights to her work”.
We have always been sold that the poets of the Generation of ’27 were modern and progressive. Why didn’t they count on their poetic partners? Because they were as macho as the whole society
paco ladies
— poet and composer
‘We want each other alive’, against gender violence
The disc includes a single song of his own, Alive we love each other, who plays alongside Julia Medina, María Rodés, Marisa Valle Roso, Encarna Anillo, Ángela Bautista, Tere Bautista, Autora Power (Las Niñas) and Carmen Ferre. “Someone turns off the light and says that he is my owner / And he does not let me out of this bad dream / Today the butterflies have no colors / Today all the flowers have turned grey”, starts this song that cries out against the violence of gender.
“The reality is very sad”, criticizes the musician regarding this issue, “ending last year with 49 women murdered and already having six in this one is terrible. It is a scourge of our society that must be eradicated”. “I have always thought that the base is in education. We know what we tell the girls, not to manipulate them, not to control their cell phones, etc. But we have to do a lot of work with the men to teach them that a woman is not anyone’s private property. That is why this project has so much educational content. In my concerts I sing songs but I give them messages that have to do with all this”.
With his sights set on the future, in which he has already scheduled several performances in cities such as Seville, Son Servera in Mallorca and Fuerte del Rey in Jaén; the poet assures that he would like to continue working in the same direction: “I do not conceive of music if it is not to educate.”