The distance between Alcalá de Henares and Mieres del Camino is 461 kilometers, Google indicates. But from what we could appreciate this Saturday night at the Concerts on the Wall, they touched the skin and the soul. Víctor Manuel celebrates 60 years of his career, since he arrived in Madrid as a teenager to learn music theory and singing in Sagasta Street in Madrid; and to try his luck in radio contests (one of them, won the previous year by a girl who was still called Mari Pili Cuesta, the name Ana Belén would be born shortly after the head of Luis Lucia, and with whom seven years later he would end up falling in love, until now).
In 1966 he stayed with the poet Fina de Calderón, where Augusto Algueró discovered him for Belter, but he quickly found his own essence as an artist. The Asturian giant continues to surprise and is not unusual among the few remaining artists without a network. You have to live to sing it, of course.
The commitment of the current tour of the Asturian is in symphonic form, which is to say music with all the letters. With an extraordinary voice, that trademark of the house that scratches like sandpaper in the heart, he re-edits that ephemeral experience that he lived, with the help of Joan Albert Amargós, in 1999 in Gijón: he surrounds himself with 130 local musicians and choirs (in this case those of Alcalá de Henares) to offer, in the first part, a postcard that mixes Asturian passages from that wonderful album “Verde” that he recorded in the summer of 1973 after his return from exile in Mexico.
A clash with the Franco regime took place in our country on the occasion of the musical Ravos at the Manolo Fábregas Theater of the DF era. and closed the doors to the recording of songs written by himself; That is why he used Torner’s songbook and the anonymous popular collection to record a series of Asturian songs, which made up “Verde”, arranged by Juan Carlos Calderón (and which, ironically, hid more sexual charges in their everyday verses, but this went unnoticed by the censorship muffle).
Then he made virtue a necessity and now he recovers some of those passages, intertwining them with his own songs in a first part that began sublimely, with the “Asturias” of the Sevillian poet Pedro Garfias in front of the 1,500 spectators who applauded wildly at the Place de la Huerta del Obispo. It is an incomparable medieval space, which, due to the format of the festival, sometimes recalled the Botanical Nights of the University City.
Eleven songs in this first section, which lasted 45 minutes and in which pieces like “They were two children” joined “Pastor que tas en el monte”, “Axuntando y atropando”, “Ayer vite en la fonte” or “Dime”. paxarín parleru’, the four that he saved from ‘Verde’, a work that he particularly likes. From his fist and his soul are ‘Duerme, neñín’, ‘La madre’, ‘Paxarinos’, ‘El grandpa Vítor’ and ‘Danza de San Juan’, with which he finished the first part.
It was getting cooler during the 15-minute break in the walled enclosure of the Complutense city (through which Isabel Pantoja and Sergio Dalma, among other great names of Spanish music, have not yet passed and for which there are still tickets available) when the stage was once again filled with strings, brass, percussion and choirs, as well as the musicians who usually accompany Víctor Manuel on his last tours, among whom David San José stands out on the piano (yes, for whom he wrote the lullaby ‘Duerme, neñín’ in 1981).
It is a pity that the Asturian has already forgotten at this point his tour of the orchestral suite with which he began after the intermission and resumed directly with ‘Allá hasta al monte’, another tribute to his country from 2018, to continue with the beautiful ‘On the way to Mieres’, a play on words that tells of the decline of his hometown after the industrial reconversion, which extends to the present day.
From mythology to love
In this second block, extraordinary arrangements for the occasion were heard of some of her best songs, which do not necessarily have to be the best known: “Tu boca una nuble blanca”, one of the songs dedicated to Ana Belén most appreciated by the Madrid public. indigenous; the enormous “Small Song”, probably one of the most inspired of her vast repertoire of 600 compositions; and the always expected version in these symphonic concerts of ‘La Sirène’, a story between dreamlike and mythological that reaches its climax with the solo of one of the choristers, like a siren song that traps the sailor and takes him… with me to the belly of the sea.
Asturian mythology also speaks of “Cuélebre” or “Danza del cuélebre”, which amounts to the same thing, a playful song that he recorded in 1978 for his last album with Philips and that he recovered at the end of that year with a muscular arrangement. in this feat that is “I am a heart lying in the sun”, the album with which he returned to the best-seller list. The most political epigraphs, a consistency that he has not renounced in six decades of songs, came with “I cut these flowers” and “How will I forget myself?” They are two moments that are much applauded every night, against democratic oblivion, and “I say Spain” (written after the Catalan on October 1, 2017) is a two-handed slap against the illusions of nationalism and the appropriations of the homelands in which “we adapt.” “everything or there is no room even for God.
“I am a heart lying in the sun”, perhaps the song most appreciated by his most loyal audience, which is probably why it has always been one of the most applauded of his live repertoire, 46 years after its birth. It is not in vain that it is a perfect story, a declaration of intentions dedicated to his audience, for which he leaves blood on the paper and for which he does not tear the pages illuminated the day before. With “I am a heart lying in the sun”, the end has arrived, but not before releasing a version of “I only think of you”, one of those compositions, like “The mother”, which emerged from a press article: in particular, from a report on the sexual and emotional relationships of people with intellectual disabilities in a center in Cabra, in Córdoba, and whose protagonists, Antonio and Mari Luz, continue to walk hand in hand throughout life.
The first piece of advice was the hyperbolic “Ay, amor”, sung with more emotion than on previous occasions. The concert had already lasted two hours when Víctor Manuel and maestro Amargós left the forum, but the audience was asking for more in the Huerta del Obispo. It didn’t take long for the encore of Asturias to arrive, to great applause, and we returned to the stages.
The respectable asked for another one and the Asturian has always been a generous repertoire, so once again ‘Cuélebre’ came out of his burrow to sign a night in which for two and a quarter hours Alcalá de Henares was a small piece of Asturias. Until next time, which could be with Víctor and Ana together, since they are already recording their next respective albums. Meanwhile, the bard from Mieres still has more performances to come, with a tour ending on November 16 at the Teatro Real. Long live good music.
Repertoire performed in Alcalá de Henares:
Part One
ASTURIAS
YESTERDAY I VISITED THE FONTE
CAPTURE AND TRAPPING
PAXARINES
SLEEP, NEÑÍN
TELL ME, PAXARÍN PARLERU
THERE WERE TWO CHILDREN
PASTOR WHO STAYED IN THE MOUNTAIN
THE MOTHER
GRANDFATHER VÍTOR
DANCE OF SAINT JOHN
Second
UP THERE IN THE NORTH
ON THE WAY TO MIERES
I CUT THESE FLOWERS
LITTLE SONG
YOUR MOUTH A WHITE CLOUD
I SAY SPAIN
THE SIREN
HOW WILL I FORGET
CUELÉBRE DANCE
I ONLY THINK OF YOU
I AM A HEART IN THE SUN
Encores
OH, LOVE
ASTURIAS
CUELÉBRE DANCE
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