Glory to Patti Smith, living legend of American rock

The Temporada Alta festival opens with a bang, with a double concert by Patti Smith, a living legend of American rock, at the Girona Auditorium. Two weeks before the beginning of the festival, Autumn theatre programming in the Girona regions, the 78-year-old singer reviewed the best songs of her career, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of her debut album, Horsas, one of the most influential in history.

It's truly moving to see an artist of Patti Smith's significance on stage. The realization that we're witnessing the final moments of an entire generation of immeasurable musicians, many of whom are no longer with us, such as Tom Verlaine, Lou Reed, and David Bowie, who illuminated the popular culture of an entire generation. As soon as she stepped onto the stage, Smith received a resounding standing ovation from the Girona audience, and throughout the concert she wove together a solid and honest performance, with extraordinary, high-energy moments, without any sign of complacency or decline.

With a tough yet approachable demeanor, the singer dominates the stage and has a great ability to communicate the poetic and narrative force of her lyrics. She obviously no longer has the thunderous energy of her younger days, but her presence maintains its character and connects with the audience. The voice also holds up: it's rough and heavy, but it rises with poise and volume. All of this is enhanced by a very powerful classic rock band, with his son Jackson Smith on guitar.

In Girona, for an hour and forty minutes, Smith displayed a repertoire made up of his own songs and covers of key artists of his time, whose hybrid style moves between folk of Dylanesque heritage and the most torn electric rock of Jimi Hendrix, passing through to Jimi Hendrix, passing through to Blondie. His universe encompasses lyrical pieces and ballads, such as the beautiful Break it up –dedicated to Jim Morrison–, or the version of Man in the long black coat Bob Dylan's. The spiritual dimension, inherited from the years, also resonates hippies, with mantras like Ghost dance, a tribute to the memory of the indigenous peoples of America. But above all, it explodes with the most poignant themes, with abstract but vindictive lyrics, such as The rat, created with Soundwalk Collective, which she sang with a defiant look, and spitting on the floor included. In the same vein as Beneath the southern cross and Peaceable kingdomThe latter, written in 2003 in memory of the Palestinian people, was heard again, as expected, with the full weight of the atrocious current events upon us. And finally, the anthem cannot be missed. Because the night, the acronym for Glory and, as a culmination, the collective song People have the power.