Mediterranean rock by Ja T'ho Diré returns to the stage twenty years later

GironaAfter more than two decades of silence, the legendary Menorcan band Ja T'ho Diré, led by Cris Juanico, returns to the stage. Their first performance will be on Saturday, August 9th at the Sons del Món Festival in Roses, followed by three more concerts: on August 22nd in Menorca, on the 30th at the Acústica in Figueres, and on September 12th in Mallorca.

Ya T'ho Diré's return was not planned in advance or with many projections for the future, but rather it developed naturally and coherently. The spark was the tribute concert to Sente Fontestad, drummer of the band that passed away just over a year ago, which was held last November and brought together a bunch of musician friends to remember the group's repertoire. "Life goes by so fast and we should try to make the most of it. At this reunion, we saw that our songs were significant to the lives of many people who looked up to us," Juanico recalls. He adds: "When we started rehearsing again, we found meaning in the songs again, we got the urge to be with them, we were honest and saw that it was possible. The big difficulty was that Sente wasn't there, but he would surely have been the first to sign up." Since they retired in 2003, Juanico has performed several solo concerts and the band is leaving meet again punctually in 2013.

The Roses concert will have a unique and special repertoire, focused on Wild movements, the 1995 album that catapulted the group to the forefront of the Catalan music scene thirty years ago. With famous songs like If you come, Nothing moves either Even So, the album consolidated the band's identity and style of "Mediterranean rock", with a consistent sound, decisive rhythms, riffs with guitar, melodic vocals, and well-crafted lyrics in the Menorcan dialect. "In 1991, we left Menorca and embarked on the adventure of making a living from music, with one hand on the guitar and the other on the suitcase. This meant a time of adaptation and making mistakes, and this album is the culmination of this experience. It's the first thing we did the way we wanted, without...

A group from Menorca linked to Girona

The story of Ja T'ho Diré is that of a group of friends who, almost accidentally, came up with the name of a rock band and, at the age of twenty-five, left the island where they had grown up to try to make a name for themselves. In the early 1990s, they landed in Biure d'Empordà, in the house of music promoter and manager Jordi Gratacós. Since then, all its members have maintained a very close relationship with Girona and its surroundings. Girorquines either menorgins They call themselves that. So it's no coincidence that the first concert was in Roses: "We're really excited. In 1991, we settled in a farmhouse in the Empordà and made friends with a group of people who are now family. We played our first concerts in small venues in the region," Juanico recalls.

The current Catalan music scene, dominated by urban styles, reggaeton, and Latin rhythms, has little to do with the effervescence of Catalan rock twenty years ago, born in a society very conscious of the use of the language, without mobile phones, the internet, or platforms. However, for Juanico, this doesn't mean in any way that the music of the end of the century is outdated and has no place: "It's still valid and people listen to it, because the audience that was 25 years old at that time also has the right to hear live the songs that defined their youth," he argues. Their fans are encouraging them to return to the stage, but aside from the four planned concerts, the members of Ja T'ho Diré aren't thinking any further, not even about future tours or new songs: "We're not obligated to anything. The decision we make will be because we believe in it and we see it as possible," concludes Juanico.