Maria del Mar Bonet: "It is a privilege to be able to release a vinyl record in these times"

BarcelonaLike water that springs forth, Maria del Mar Bonet, does not stop. After six decades dedicated to music, poetry, and stages, she returns with the album L'aigua no cansa (Blau/Discmedi, 2026), new songs in homage to the Mediterranean, popular tradition, and poetry. The album will be presented on May 23rd at the Palau de la Música as part of the Guitar BCN program, the starting point of a tour that will include a stop at the Olympia in Paris on October 11th.The album's title is no accident. "The Majorcan poet Pare Rafael Ginard used to say that popular music was like water that never tires," Bonet explains at Espai Mallorca in Barcelona. An image he has made his own and which underpins everything, with the help of Toni Pastor as producer. For the singer, "all the songs have meaning" and were made possible thanks to the lute, castanets, and dobro played by seven Majorcan musicians.

Poetry is at the center of everything. The album features not only original compositions but also poems by other authors. This is the case with Blaus i sol de roses blanques, a fragment of the poem Final de la missa de presantificats from the book Quatre poemes de Setmana Santa by Blai Bonet, a poet the singer-songwriter knew as a child and with whom she shares a deep connection. Also personal is La cançó dels disbarats, which was not born out of a desire to create a new folk song but from the memory of her father, who used to sing it to her when she was little. As she only remembered the beginning and the end, she decided to rewrite the middle verses herself, populating them with marine imagery. “I summoned an octopus, starfish, a mermaid, a tourist, a brunette, and a seagrass meadow, the kind that is so threatened,” she explains, laughing.

The album does not shy away from the present. In the song S'aigo no, the lyrics "speak of water in a painful sense," explains Bonet, referring to the storm that affected Valencia in 2024, of "the tremendous number of victims and the political system that has disrespected all the people who have suffered." The water does not tire closes with Moon of peace, a collaboration with the Cuban composer José María Vitier, with whom Bonet met in Cuba. “I had recited it, but I had never sung it,” she says. The album has not only been released on digital platforms but also on CD and vinyl, formats that Bonet considers indispensable. “For me, it is a privilege to be able to make a vinyl record in these times, I don’t understand the invisible formats that people listen to, but you can’t hold them, like a book.” For her, maintaining a “creative continuity” necessarily involves physical formats.