Catalan Music, from the Soul

About the author of this article for Help Catalonia

Èric Vinaixa

Singer, musician, composer and producer.

I do not know whether I should say “curiously”, “innocently”, “intentionally” or “casually”, but after editing three albums (two with Rodamons and one by myself) and several collaborations, people ask me often why I sing in Catalan (and occasionally in English) when I would reach more public singing only in Spanish or English.

The answer is very easy: Music should be honest. Free. Without artifice. It should come out from the soul. I think, breath, and feel in Catalan because it is my mother tongue. That is why I do not understand my music differently. However, from the cultural point of view, English is my second tongue because it is the language all my main reference musicians have used since I have use of reason. And I have internalized it. In addition to being a phonetically very grateful tongue, with lots of monosyllables and licenses to distort words and sounds, which makes it easy to adapt words to music. There is nothing more.

I do not make music for the masses, I make music for me. I always write for me. In order to feel. That is why I do not take styles or moment fashions into account, or mass languages. I only have in mind what I feel. Independently that it may be current or not, it may swim upstream, it may just be understood by 10 million people or a whole continent, it may be a new genre, etc.

I sing because it is the way I feel more free. Music is my way to express myself. The more honest one I have for doing it. It has always been like that, even when I did not know it. And composition, the most direct vehicle to connect to myself. That is, pure therapy. When writing, I always make music first because, as far as I understand it, it is the transformation of a mood by itself. Letting one be taken by the sounds. Freezing a moment, an atmosphere that is being created right then, living the birth of a unique moment. Afterwards, usually with some distance, I write the lyrics. That already requires a more intellectual effort. And I always do it from experiences I have lived, either in first or third person, and from things which move me. Since for me, human relations are the true driving forces of life.

Success is being able to live doing what you love, in the way you like. Being consistent with yourself. And, if possible, that when all the songs one writes, from the most inexplicable magic and mystics, get to the people, they can move them and, instead of remaining in a drawer, become songs that accompany them in their long trip.

But this is just my viewpoint. Let everyone find their way…

Greetings.

Èric Vinaixa

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