After more than a decade collecting documents and testimonies from family and friends, Dario Ledesmacreator and responsible for the official website of Nino Bravopublishes the first authorized biography of the Valencian singer, who died 49 years ago this Saturday, which invites you to discover “the person behind the myth”.
“Nino Bravo. Voz y corazón”, published by the Catalan publisher Milenio, brings together in almost 500 pages the “true story of the father, husband, friend and singer” through interviews with relatives, friends and the people who accompanied him in his life and artistic career, who bring to light unpublished anecdotes and documents, and wants to do “justice musical and historical” to one of the most influential artists of pop music in Spanish.
“The general vision of Nino Bravo -artistic name of Luis Manuel Ferri– It’s about a character who reached success and left when he was at the top, but there was no explanation of how he got there, what were the barriers and obstacles he had, his relationship with other singers of the time and knowing more about the person behind the character,” Ledesma told Efe.
The author explains that one of the greatest contributions of the book is to be able to “zoom in” on his childhood through the memories of his relatives, who recall in the book the music he listened to as a child on the radio, his love of movies from Anthony Molinaor the reasons that led him to move, from Aielo de Malferit to Valencia, from there to Carcaixent and back to Valencia.
Ledesma clarifies, for example, that he did not go to school in Aielo de Malferit, where the singer was born and has his museum, the town of his ancestors, to which he returned in the summer; He talks about his paternal great-grandmother, who was an opera singer and his great-grandfather, director of the choirs of the Valencian choir, and that Carcaixent was where he grew up, studied as a child and had his first friends.
Also one of his first musical influences from the hand of Jorge Sepúlveda, Antonio Machín, Jorge Negrete, Carlos Gardel or Antonio Molinacante jondo and Italian singers, especially Domenico Modugno, who “awakened” his motivation to dedicate himself to music.
The Spanish Frank Sinatra
Ledesma also assures that he wanted to become a Tom Jones o Frank Sinatra Spanish, with his own voice that identified him, and that in fact he achieved it on his latest album, in which he brought international hits such as ‘Mona Lisa’ or ‘Laura’ to his home turf.
The book is riddled with anecdotes also of his musical career, from his first group Los Hispánicos to Los Superson and his solo debut under his stage name, Nino Bravo, of whose choice there are also numerous versions.
The most credible in the author’s opinion is that of the person who was his first representative, Miguel Siuran, the one who found him: Nino because of the rise of names in Italian and because it sounds the same in any language, and Bravo because of his character, since although he was a shy person when he showed his temper he was very “bravy”.
The story is also accompanied by unpublished photographs, of family and intimate moments that the singer always guarded with great zeal. “He defended that the family belonged to Luis Manuel Ferri and the news that was given in the press had to be strictly musical”, of his artistic facet, recalls the author.
One test was her wedding with Protectionwho did in the strict privacy. A journalist from ‘Mundo Joven’ managed to sneak into the ceremony and in retaliation Nino Bravo sent the photos to an agency so that they would be released and thus annoy him with the exclusive.
Ledesma assures that with this work he wanted to leave a legacy about the history and trajectory of man and his “another self”, with his “lights and shadows” and as objective as possible, and write the book that he, as a fan, would have liked to read.
And where would Nino Bravo have arrived today? “I imagine it with an international success that was already being projected, recording in englishwould have continued recording albums but at a different pace, to spend the rest of the time producing other artists and, without a doubt, linked to music”.
Of the validity of the myth “you just have to remember that ‘Libre‘ was one of the songs that was played when the confinement was lifted” due to the coronavirus pandemic, says the author.
“His ‘fans’ needed to feel Nino Bravo present, to be able to accompany him on that vital journey that was fatefully cut short on April 16, 1973″ in a traffic accident.
Darío Ledesma will present the book “Nino Bravo. Voz y corazón” next Wednesday at El Corte Inglés on Calle Colón in Valenciaaccompanied by Amparo Ferri, the singer’s daughter.