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| Lluis Serrahima i Villavecchia |
Today, The Grandma has received sad news again. Lluís Serrahima, a Catalan writer, and promoter of the group Els Setze Jutges within the Nova Cançó catalana movement has died at 89.
The Grandma is Andorran and she knows how important is to keep alive a language and a culture, especially when it is threatened by other.
Lluís Serrahima was a person who loved his culture and fought for it. We are witnesses of this struggle and we must continue with it.
More than 40 years after he wrote Què volen aquesta gent? a song considered a hymn against the Francoism repression and dictatorship sung by Maria del Mar Bonet. This song continues being sung nowadays. This demonstrates that nothing has changed since that age, dictatorship never finished, and democracy has never arrived. This is the drama and the real explanation to events that we are living currently.
Lluís Serrahima i Villavecchia (Barcelona, 19 August 1931-26 July 2020) was a Catalan writer, promoter of the group Els Setze Jutges within the Nova Cançó catalana movement.
Son of Maurici Serrahima i Bofill and Carme Villavecchia i Dotti, he graduated in law. His article Ens calen cançons d'ara, published in 1959 in Germinàbit is considered the founding text of the movement.
Although he performed several times in public performing some of his own songs, he sang Jo soc pansit como la luna at the session held at the CICF on December 19, 1961, he did not record a record and soon left the stage, despite who continued to write texts for other performers now and then: Miquel Porter i Moix (Sóc un burgés) Els 4 Gats (Cla i Cat), Maria del Mar Bonet (Què volen aquesta gent?).
More information: Què volen aquesta gent? by Maria del Mar Bonet
In the mid-1980s the Generalitat de Catalunya put him in charge of a department dedicated to song in all its manifestations, being appointed in 1986 head of the Music Service of the Generalitat de Catalunya.
In 2007 he was awarded the Medal of Honor of the Parliament of Catalonia, together with the members of Els Setze Jutges.
In November 2018, 1984 Editions published Què volen aquesta gent? El llegat poètic that includes his poems Com el mar (1962) and Torno a salpar (2004) as well as the unpublished book Figures en assaig, with literary edition and prologue by Glòria Soler Giménez.
Els Setze Jutges was a group of singers in the Catalan language founded in 1961 by Miquel Porter i Moix, Remei Margarit, and Josep Maria Espinàs.
The name comes from a well known tongue-twister in the Catalan language: Setze jutges d'un jutjat mengen fetge d'un penjat, Sixteen judges of a court eat liver off a hangman.
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| Some of Els Setze Jutges |
The mission of the group was to promote the Nova Cançó movement and to normalize the use of Catalan in the world of modern music.
They started out singing their own songs and Catalan versions of songs by French singers, especially Georges Brassens.
From the original three members, the circle grew to sixteen: Delfí Abella, Francesc Pi de la Serra, Enric Barbat, Xavier Elies, Guillermina Motta, Maria del Carme Girau, Martí Llauradó, Maria Amèlia Pedrerol, Joan Ramon Bonet, Joan Manuel Serrat, Maria del Mar Bonet, Lluís Llach, and Rafael Subirachs.
Els Setze Jutges began to dissolve at the end of the dictatorship and with the progressive professionalization of some of the group's members.
With the appearance of professional Catalan-language singers, many of the group's earlier members, such as Miquel Porter i Moix and Josep Maria Espinàs, decided to retire from music.
By the time the group ceased to exist in 1968, several of its members - most notably Serrat, but also Llach, Maria del Mar Bonet, Pi de la Serra, Barbat, Motta and Subirachs - had begun to enjoy success as individual musicians.
More information: Què volen aquesta gent? by Sabor de Gràcia
On April 13, 2007, the group of singers received the Medal of Honor of the Parliament of Catalonia, in recognition of their work in favor of Catalan culture and language during the dictatorship.
However, Maria del Mar Bonet used the occasion to criticize the lack of promotion of Catalan-language songs in the media during the three decades since the Spanish transition to democracy, and Guillermina Motta declined to attend the ceremony, objecting that the distinction was awarded too late, when two of the sixteen had already died: Miquel Porter in 2004 and Delfí Abella in February 2007.
The Nova Cançó was an
artistic movement that promoted Catalan music in Francoist Spain.
The movement sought to normalize use of the Catalan language in popular music and denounced the injustices in Francoist Spain.
The Grup de Folk, which emerged in the same period, also promoted a new form of popular music in Catalan, drawing inspiration from contemporary American and British music.
The movement sought to normalize use of the Catalan language in popular music and denounced the injustices in Francoist Spain.
The Grup de Folk, which emerged in the same period, also promoted a new form of popular music in Catalan, drawing inspiration from contemporary American and British music.
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| Receiving the Medal of Honour, Parliament of Catalonia |
The Nova Cançó movement originated at the end of the 1950s, twenty years after the installation of the Spanish State with its repressive policies against the Catalan language and Catalan culture.
The late 1950s were a period of economic and political change in Spain: Spain ended its policy of economic autarky, and Francoist Spain was admitted to the United Nations, which required the government to improve its image abroad. In this new context, at the beginning of the 1960s, new cultural projects emerged in Catalonia.
In 1961, the record label Edigsa and the cultural organization Òmnium Cultural were founded, and the first edition of the children's magazine Cavall Fort was published.
In April 1962, the publishing house Edicions 62 released its first book. Little by little, the Catalan language, the public use of which had been expressly forbidden after the fall of Catalonia in the Spanish Civil War, began to regain a public presence.
A notable example is the magazine Germinàbit, published by the Abbey of Montserrat, which in October 1952 became the magazine Serra d’Or.
A notable example is the magazine Germinàbit, published by the Abbey of Montserrat, which in October 1952 became the magazine Serra d’Or.
In 1957, the writer
Josep Maria Espinàs gave lectures on the French singer-songwriter
Georges Brassens, whom he called the troubadour of our times. Espinàs
had begun to translate some of Brassens' songs into Catalan.
In 1958, two EPs of songs in Catalan were released: Hermanos Serrano: Cantan en catalán los éxitos internationals and José Guardiola: canta en catalán los éxitos internationales. They are now considered the first recordings of modern music in the Catalan language. These singers, as well as others such as Font Sellabona and Rudy Ventura, form a prelude to the Nova Cançó.
In 1958, two EPs of songs in Catalan were released: Hermanos Serrano: Cantan en catalán los éxitos internationals and José Guardiola: canta en catalán los éxitos internationales. They are now considered the first recordings of modern music in the Catalan language. These singers, as well as others such as Font Sellabona and Rudy Ventura, form a prelude to the Nova Cançó.
The movement's beginnings were in the second half of the 1950s, with the formation of a group suggested by Josep Benet i de Joan and Maurici Serrahima. This consisted of Jaume Armengol, Lluís Serrahima and Miquel Porter, who started composing Catalan songs.
In 1959, after an article by Lluís Serrahima, titled Ens calen cançons d'ara was published in Germinàbit, more authors and singers were attracted to the movement. Miquel Porter, Josep Maria Espinàs and Remei Margarit founded the group Els Setze Jutges.
Their first concert, although still not with this name, was on 19 December 1961, in Barcelona. Their first performance with the name of Els Setze Jutges was in Premià de Mar in 1962.
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| Lluís Serrahima & Maria del Mar Bonet |
In the following years, new singers joined the group, until the number of sixteen (Setze). The group offered numerous performances all over Catalonia with a willingness of filling a lack in popular music in Catalan, often in precarious conditions, in which they followed the same system: everyone of the four or five members in the stage sung in turns, with his guitar, while the others were seated in the background on the stage.
The first Nova Cançó records appeared in 1962, and many musical bands, vocal groups, singer-songwriters, and interpreters picked up the trend.
In 1963, a professional Catalan artist, Salomé, and a Valencian, Raimon, were awarded the first prize of the Fifth Mediterranean Song Festival with the song Se'n va anar.
Despite the restrictions and administrative hurdles in television and radio broadcast, as well as in record industry, the Nova Cançó became increasingly popular, so many interpreters started to professionalize: first members of Els Setze Jutges sang as an amateur activity, and they leave when younger members started a career as a singers, such as Joan Manuel Serrat, Lluís Llach, Maria del Mar Bonet, Guillermina Motta or Francesc Pi de la Serra. At the same time, other variations on the style, based on other genres such as folk, appeared, with bands such as Grup de Folk and Esquirols.
Other important participants in the movement included Guillem d'Efak and Núria Feliu, who received the Spanish Critics' Award in 1966, or other new members of Els Setze Jutges. Some of them were even well known abroad.
As time passed, some bilingual singers appeared and other ideological positions emerged, diverging from the initial ideas behind the movement.
Other significant figures appeared somewhat later, like the Valencian Ovidi Montllor.
Inspired by the success of the Nova Cançó, parallel movements sprang up in Galicia, Basque Country (Euskal Kantagintza Berria), and Castile.
More information: Què volen aquesta gent? by Escarteen Sisters
De matinada han trucat,
són al replà de l'escala,
la mare quan surt a obrir
porta la bata posada.
Què volen aquesta gent
que truquen de matinada?
They knocked in the early morning,
they’re on the landing of the stairs;
when the mother comes to open the door
she has on her dressing gown.
What do these people want
who knock in the early morning?
De matinada han trucat,
són al replà de l'escala,
la mare quan surt a obrir
porta la bata posada.
Què volen aquesta gent
que truquen de matinada?
They knocked in the early morning,
they’re on the landing of the stairs;
when the mother comes to open the door
she has on her dressing gown.
What do these people want
who knock in the early morning?
Lluís Serrahima
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