Feliu Ventura: "One of the worst things that can happen to us is to be a disappointed society"

BarcelonaFeliu Ventura (Xàtiva, 1976) published a few months ago Quan el cel es tornà negre, a song against the management of the October 2024 storm in the Valencian Country, and in support of the victims and neighborhood solidarity. He has also included it in Tot el que hem guanyatperdent (Propaganda pel Fet, 2026), an album of domestic anthems, singer-songwriter music with electronic textures and a resilient and, despite everything, hopeful outlook.

When we last spoke, regarding the song Quan el cel es tornà negre, I asked you if it would be representative of the album. And you told me no, especially in terms of sound.

— Yes. It's different because it's a choral song and because we're looking for a traditional feel, whereas the electronic textures are more evident in the other songs. However, it also happens that when you finish the album you realize things. In this case, I saw that When the sky turned black fit the album a little bit.

The concept of loss is indeed shared with the other songs, but the sonority is not.

— Exactly. We were also in an earlier production process and with a new producer, Genís Ibáñez, who is quite young. We were getting to know each other and ended up finding a path that has been sonically drawn on the album. The summary is that some electronic textures have appeared; it's not an electronic album, but there is a different sound, even though the songs, the lyrics, and the way of explaining are more or less the usual ones.

Is your album more Franco Battiato?

— Probably, yes. Although sometimes I fish with dynamite, you know? Over the years I've been experimenting out of sheer boredom, but now I really wanted to do something more my own, and little by little we are finding it.

I was referring to Battiato because of your way of working electronics in singer-songwriter music.

— Yes, there were many references. Surely, many albums ago I had listened a lot to Jorge Drexler, and there was that part. But now you are right, the treatment of the electronic parts is not the same.

You were talking about Genís Ibáñez. Are the guitars in Me'n vaig, which have so much ferocity, his doing?

— Yes. And he has a partner, Carles Rodenas, who is a guitarist that helps him with the recordings, not just as a studio musician. Although some production aspects this time come directly from my room, and have remained, others are the result of a meeting point with Genís's ideas and how he works with studio musicians.

I'm leaving and On guard are songs with a different sound from the rest, especially because of the guitars. Were you looking for such a strong contrast?

— What happens to me with albums is that each song is very different. The concept is created by the album's narrative, not the music. And here this has happened a little. Me'n vaig is an old melody I had a long time ago. When I was recording Quan el cel es tornà negre, with greats of traditional music like Pep Gimeno Botifarra, Miquel Gil and Vicent Torrent, they told me that Me’n vaig was a miserere. I haven't looked for it specifically, but it's true that there's a part of folk singing that is part of me. Furthermore, I have delved into writing lyrics for Pep Gimeno Botifarra on the album Ja ve l’aire... En guàrdia and Me'n vaig are very cinematic, like a soundtrack to explain the story of the text. But these are very different.

Like a sun drying the sky, which has a melodic progression that sounds like Antònia Font, it must be the most pop song you have ever made.

— Surely, as it was a very wet song in the everyday pen, there is a part of that. I really like Joan Miquel Oliver's work. In fact, I've had the good fortune to be able to take it to Xàtiva, to the Festival Música i Lletra.

Also a few months ago you were telling me that the people who had heard the songs from the album had told you that you had made a mature album, and that it was about time at 50 years old.

— Really, what maturity brings me is fatherhood, which makes me see the world in a different way. And I am super happy that it is so, because I see things differently and many things that I was convinced of are reaffirmed.

Does parenthood affect how you write about loss and hope? If you weren't a parent, wouldn't you write about loss the same way?

— I think I would write a little differently. Parenthood is something experienced. Furthermore, we have experienced motherhood in a very profound way, because we lived it in confinement. My partner [Laia Gordi] has made a book called La revolta de les mares, which talks about that, about how she and we have approached that world, and it is seen a lot in the lyrics of the album when they talk about the bond, about passing the baton to those who come, about accepting losses, also the losses of friendships that are lost along these paths. And there is a change, for example, between Cançó de bressol enmig del col·lapse, from the album Convocatòria [2019], which appeared when our son was being born in the hospital and talks about parenthood from absolute ignorance, and Tu dona-ho tot, which is the last one from the new album, and I see that now I understand some things that I barely intuited before. They are like two songs that join hands at the beginning and end of this process.

"We underestimated everything", "we put our hand in the fire", "there was nothing to be done", "it cost us our health", "we lost the money"... you sing to Everything we have gained by losing, the first song on the album. What a start...

— Well, it's also a song full of hope. We have danced on the peaks and in the end we know that, despite all that we have lost, we will end up winning. Obviously, like all my songs, it's not just personal losses: there is a series of social losses, as a country, but most of them can be explained with a key of resilience and progress. One of the worst things that can happen to us is to be a disappointed society, and that's something that happened in 1978 and in 2017, and as a result of that, those monsters that appear, appear. We know it, they said it, they sang it, but always against the walls. And well, here are the songs and those of us who write to be witnesses and chroniclers. We already said it, now we have to start moving towards another moment of light. Strangely, we still have to be on guard, because things look very bad.

You still maintain the ability to introduce a verse that makes sense within the song but means much more. For example, in the song Like a sun harvesting in the sky, when you say: «We were you and I in an apartment in your city that we couldn't afford now». The real estate crisis in one verse.

— I think this comes from a bit of Estellés and Marcial's sharp wit, who always had a final verse that was the punchline of everything else. It's a song that, as you say, has a very pop feel and talks about a very everyday thing, and that seems harmless, but in the end this happens: not only is there an apartment we can't afford, but we don't have time to touch ourselves, or to go to dinner, because we always have to go do I don't know what or buy I don't know what, and it's urgent. And then it turns out that what we need to take care of are not the urgent things, but the important ones. This is what I want to explain in the song. I lived in Barcelona for eight years, first in Gràcia, then in les Planes and in Masnou... And as a musician, the only way to survive was to return to Xàtiva, minimize the impact of rent and make music freely in a cooperative. It's a criticism, but at the same time it's a call, the need for this to change. I would like Barcelona to be as I knew it at the beginning, and then the real estate issue was already as it was. But now it's Valencia, it's Barcelona, it's everywhere. It's one of the important problems we have, but also for those who come after us, and it had to be explained.

An intruder in my dream is a song about grief or about a love that no longer exists?

— It's a duel of friendship, a very important duel. It's surely one of the most lived and most healing songs for me. There are all the phases of grief, and the chorus is precisely about overcoming grief, talking about it from survival. In rehearsal, the musicians were already telling me: 'I have two or three people to send the song to.' Therefore, I saw that it did work.

Is it possible to repair a broken friendship after years?

— I am not talking about repairing a friendship, but about repairing oneself, because the friendship no longer exists. Just as we have not been prepared to die, we are not prepared for the loss of a friend even if they are present. It is something that happens more as you get older and that must be lived with serenity. These are things that happen, in the end it is also about cleaning house, and understanding that things do not have to be forever. Are there those that last forever? Yes, but there are friendships that do not; suddenly you don't know why all communication bridges break, and you don't know how to approach them.

Speaking of bridges: do you feel connected to the generation of singers like la Maria? People who are half your age?

— Yes, a lot. I remember Joan Jara, Victor Jara's wife, who explained to me: "Victor always said that every musician is a link in a chain, and that you cannot separate yourself from the previous link or the next one." Our music is this chain. I cannot separate myself from the previous links, from all of them, from Raimon, Ovidi Montllor, Lluís Llach, Pau Riba... And the same going forward, even from the generations that no longer know what I do. I see the broken thread more in the music industry, which needs public control. If there is no public control, any industry pollutes, mistreats workers and consumers. And the music industry is out of control, very out of control, and what it has produced is damage to the emergence of figures like Maria's, because the industry monopolizes spaces where emerging voices cannot come out. What do they have to do, if the concerts that used to be held by neighborhood associations and cultural centers no longer exist, if there is no impetus through awards or competitions that are not just television image contests? What do these new voices have to do? Be born all on Instagram or TikTok? Perhaps it is the way they have, just as we used to distribute cassettes around. I don't see the broken thread among musicians, I see it in a way of treating music.