Majorcan composer and singer Tomeu Penya will perform a concert this Saturday, October 26, in Martorell (El Progrés, 9 p.m.). He will present his new album there His life is two dayswhich is the 33rd in his long musical career, which began more than four decades ago. A mixture of traditional Mallorcan music and very close daily life themes and rhythms Country i Rock&Roll.
The concert will combine some of the twelve tracks from the new album with some of the more than 350 songs that Penya has composed since he started in the world of music and that have made him so well known, especially in the islands and Catalonia. Tickets to attend are now on sale at the price of 5 euros for the general public, 4 euros for the reduced advance (for the young audience up to 25 years old and the oldest 65 years old or pensioner), and 6 euros at the box office on the same day. They can be purchased in advance at entrades.martorell.cat.
In an interview given to Ràdio Martorell, Tomeu Penya talks about the latest album, his career and what are his sources of inspiration. Having reached musical maturity, Penya reflects on life and the need to take advantage and live intensely every moment, as proclaimed in the title of the album.
His life is two days is his last work, the album that makes 33 in your musical career. What is different or peculiar about the previous ones?
I don’t think it has many different things. I put a little bit of country music, a little bit of music to listen to, a little bit of dance music to make it a mix of all styles. The difference from the others is that they are all new songs, but the style has been marked by me all my life.
Therefore, a work that combines the traditional music of his Mallorca with American styles such as country or the Rock&Roll. Music from here and there.
From a very young age I studied all the styles there were, the ones that started like that Rock&Rollhe Reggaeballads, verbena song, to make people think, protest, happy… we studied all this in the groups where he played. We studied the styles and also solfeggio, harmony…and all this has marked my way of composing. Thus, on each album there are many different things, especially songs where I defend my land, my Catalan language, our Majorcan idiosyncrasy… there is a little bit of everything in these twelve songs.
Is it hard to find new themes and beats that inspire you?
When you have more than 300 songs written you can come to believe that you have touched all the threads and all the harmonies, but this is not true, because the world changes every day. Today is already different from yesterday and tomorrow will be different from today. And as a composer, you can find new things every day. You don’t have to abandon your style, which must be unmistakable because otherwise you don’t get to mark a line. But your style changes with life, and every day is different. Yesterday doesn’t exist anymore and tomorrow doesn’t matter either… what matters is the moment we live in now, because tomorrow we don’t know if everything will go to shit. Therefore, I compose what I feel that day. Songs are moments in your life, and you have to take advantage of them.
Did you spend a lot of time composing the songs that make up the album?
There’s a little bit of everything. There are songs that come to you in a week and others that take six months. For example, many years ago I wrote a song called ‘Mallorquins and Catalans’ and it took me six months to compose a three-minute song! In those moments I felt something, but the next day everything changed and I had to make changes, without offending anyone but being sarcastic, saying that we are brothers but you to yours and I to mine and God to everyone’s!
In this sense, inspiration must be very important. He explained in a television interview that he doesn’t want to be taken by surprise, right?
Yes, exact! Right now I have my guitar, a pad and a pencil next to me because I’m writing a new song and I need to be ready. I usually spend eight to ten hours a day on music, whether it’s playing the guitar or the piano, to try new things and feel free to play well. I haven’t had a Muse tell me what to write, I do a lot of daily work with anything I see on the street or read in the newspaper that has pissed me off, made me happy or interested Songs are moments that you have to take advantage of, write and make music.
Let’s look at the cover of the album and we see a very difficult Tomeu to recognize because he appears without a beard or glasses…
In that photo I was 19 years old. I put it on the cover because it was consistent with the title of the album, because on the front, on the cover, you see a young Tomeu who played in a Rock&Roll group, and on the back you see the current one take There are two, there are two days on the disc: the front and the back. And it is the message that you need to take advantage of life every day.
Which of his songs can we hear this Saturday in Martorell?
Do you know what happens? My problem is that I have more than 350 songs recorded on disc, and making a repertoire of an hour and a half or an hour and three quarters is not easy and I always have to leave some that the audience would like to hear. And then I put on some new ones, but I can’t put them all on because I leave half a concert on the new ones and people want to hear the ones they know. And if I were to choose one song per disc, it would be two and a half hours of concert… I have to make a middle ground because I have to make everyone happy.
He has been an emblem of his native Mallorca for more than 40 years and has accumulated a lot of experience. How do you see the musical scene in your country? Are there young people who start doing something similar to what their first steps in the world of music were?
I will tell you that when I started singing in my language there was no one who did it. Maybe one or two, but they hadn’t been doing well. It was just me and it took me a while. I can say from experience that very strange things happened to me, some hard and some very happy. Nowadays, young people are very well prepared musically, they have taken the good things from the elders and brought their youth and strength, and that is why they are always moving forward, progressing and doing new things.
In a way, it has paved the way, then?
My generation found a job as a musician because he did everything: music for dances, hotels, party rooms, and above me, I did my pinitos singing in Majorcan around the towns. But nowadays groups that make their own songs can’t make a living from music, they have to do two or three other jobs on the side. There are few of them who can make a living, and they are very good and very good groups and excellent musicians. Possibly more than others, but they have the problem that they can’t make a living from music.
Why do you think this is so?
You can be a very good composer, singer or instrumentalist, but that’s not enough. You have to have something special, something out of the ordinary and different from others. Something they don’t have, and that’s almost impossible to achieve. And what you were asking me before, there are very few Majorcans who succeed in Catalonia, although I can assure you that there are very good groups.
Why is it so difficult for them to succeed?
It happens to us that the musicians born in Mallorca and who live in Mallorca have already succeeded with this alone. Being somewhere else is difficult because you live in Mallorca and Mallorca is so good there that it is very difficult to risk leaving! And of those who leave, there will only be one who will succeed because he has all the conditions I mentioned earlier.
Next year it will be 45 years since he took to the stages everywhere. I think they are preparing a tour for him.
Yes, I think they are preparing something for me, but I am now focused on this concert in Martorell.
And when promoting the current album, which by the way, managed to fill the Sala Luz de Gas in Barcelona last May.
yes Perhaps this is the fruit I have earned in all these years as a composer and singer-songwriter. I think I’ve earned the right to be able to say I fill a room. Now, it must be said that this Saturday I was screwed, because my concert in Martorell will coincide with Real Madrid-Barcelona.
So let’s record the game and see it postponed, right? Inside El Progrés they won’t hear firecrackers if there are goals…
Exactly! Like me, who also won’t know what’s going on. So I encourage everyone to come to the concert on Saturday!
Source: martorelldigital.cat
