Ode to Roger Mas

You stand at the gates of seventh heaven, ceremonial and sensible, but then you run to hide among worldly joy, wild and reckless. You rise like a solemn prophet unafraid to make friends with the creatures of hell. You wear humor as a shield, and espadrilles to keep your feet light and grounded. Hope is more rhetorical than convincing, and yet, you do not give up proclaiming it. You sing of love and all that happens "skirting the perimeter." The years pass and you are still here, giant of Solsonès, provoking a smile with a joke, as if the intention were to lessen the impact you cause with your performance. You know it well, Roger Mas, who summons 2,000 people to marvel at the complete works of two albums with the Cobla Sant Jordi Ciutat de Barcelona. And at the Teatre Grec, the same venue where on July 2, 2022 you celebrated 25 years of artistic career with one of the best shows in the history of the Grec Festival. It made sense, therefore, that the same festival would now host the concert of the complete cobla works.

Around Verdaguer who in "Caminant" longed for "God's little boat" to end earthly "exile," you say: "I'm not in a hurry to leave, but I could leave happy." It's only the fifth song in the setlist and you've already received several ovations that, logically, you acknowledge in your own way, both kind and mischievous. The audience appreciated the devilish contrast of falsetto and gravitas in "Si tu ho dius", a track from volume 2 (the 2024 album) that you weave into the repertoire of the first part, dedicated to volume 1 (the 2012 album). In the same song, they also celebrated the splendor of a twelve-piece cobla, with three trumpets illuminating the melody with pop-soul arrangements. In "Caminant" you confirmed what everyone knows, that when you project your telluric voice everything is solemn, but that few singers express the vulnerability of a verse like you do, making the vibrato and tuning sit at the negotiation table of the last tonic.

"We're having a good time, I don't know if it shows," you say after warning that the night will be long, almost three hours. The joy is conveyed above all by Xavier Guitó, pianist, musical director and an essential sprite in this extraordinary adventure. You know a lot, Roger Mas, you make people know how important these musicians are, Guitó, those of the cobla, the drummer Josep Pine nut Martí and the double bassist Arcadi Marcet. At Amelia's Will the ovation rewards the cobla for the neatness with which it amplifies Joan Lamote de Grignon's sardana. And before you finish The black eagle, from Barbara, you leave the stage so the musicians can culminate the musical explosion and receive the ovation. By this point, you've already stopped time with this song. How do you manage the vibrato when you sing "slowly, wings beating" and how do you make the verse fall to the deepest terror. Special sensitivity is needed to tackle this song in which the French singer tried to understand the abuse she suffered as a child.

Later, in the copla with cobla The well paid, Maestro Guitó directs the musicians, waiting for you, for your entrances. This cannot be paid with money, there is an indestructible complicity, like the one you show with all the musicians while you recite the Ode to Francesc Pujols to close the first part. You do it relaxedly, too much even, but it achieves the effect: if we're going to fly pigeons, let it be with a smile and a few laughs. Humor and naturalness is also a great ally when you lose the thread of the lyrics at Haika boy, the Basque folk song immortalized by Mikel Laboa. You get out of it with sympathy: "I have made a little stop", you say.

The trilogy of love

Ten minutes of rest and back to the extraordinary things. When everyone will live on love (Raymond Lévesque), La canzone dell'amore perduto (from your admired Fabrizio De André) and La llorona (with Chavela Vargas in memory) is an unsurpassable trilogy, and with what emotional rigor you sing them. Little by little, the cobla shakes off solemnity and lets itself be soaked in swing in Tres branques. But you like to play, Roger Mas, and you dress it up ceremonially to project the Occitan anthem Aqueres montanhes and immediately involve it in the universe of children's songs from Si canta, your Catalan version of the same theme. How music makes one thing one way and another completely different.

You know a lot, Roger Mas, and you climb stairs to sing Lo comte Arnau among the audience. The maneuver perhaps distracts from the amount of musical genius you create about Verdaguer, "the black horse" and "the white horse", such as the tension between the double bass and the drums before the cobla's explosion. It distracts, perhaps yes, but you have gifted an unforgettable moment, which is the holy grail of live music. You finish the second part, of course, with El dolor de la bellesa, an infiltrator from volume 1. You could declare victory, but you want more. And the audience too.

You give generous and exultant kisses. The trombone shines in Look at the moon (Fred Buscaglione), what wisdom, the Italians, to sing melancholy with joy. Everyone celebrates Carme Promenade, to certify that you are mountain and you are sea, stone and agave. You are full of Sing, Mary! (Ary Barroso), which Guitó's arrangement maintains in Brazilian magic. And you leave with The holy thorn, collective euphoria that the audience accompanies with cries of independence. You call for calm and recall the peculiar "pharmacist Alexandre Deulofeu", who predicted that Spain will end in 2029. You know a lot, Roger Mas, always with the rose of wit on your lips to appease both the fervor and the smugness.

Everyone is parading towards the exit, it's almost one in the morning. You had said, quoting Maria Mercè Marçal from If the sea had handlebars, which "sometimes you don't need to understand things because we understand them very well". It already happens with art and poetry, which you don't need to understand to enjoy, or that you don't need to understand why we enjoy because the most important thing is precisely to enjoy. We leave with the feeling of having enjoyed a lot... and someone doesn't understand, Roger Mas, why you have left out of the repertoire "And the rain dried up. Nobody is perfect, we understand.