Saturday, August 25, 2018
A Confession
I can't stand Serrat and other singers of that genre. I hate Ana Belén's Lorquiana too. I'm not going to divide the world of "Lorca in song" into good and bad categories, but some of this music does raise difficult issues for me. Mere popularization, without any added element of value, is indistinguishable from kitsch.
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3 comments:
I don't like pop music and have decided that if I must handle kitsch I would almost rather go for country since it's funnier. I don't like poppy rock, didn't like all of the Doors. I know one is not to like Elvis but I think he has more music and verve than Serrat, if you're going to look at popularizers, derivative people, etc.
I don't think you can leave out the political aspect to all this--as you alluded to earlier, the nueva cancion was very important in a number of L.A. countries, perhaps above all Chile. This links up with the cantautores of Spain. Regardless of Serrat's merits or his lack of them, it's the fact of his choice of Machado, Hernandez, etc., and the dates that he's doing this, putting the texts of these poets into popular circulation, rather than the quality of his settings, that make this phenomenon important.
Right, but it is a sentimentalized politics, isn't it? The idea of doing it in a low quality way is itself a political statement.
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