They are dissimilar. The tea looks deep, ductile and subtle and has a certain solemn and domestic air. The figure exudes elegance, with a figurehead in the shape of long, precise and elegant mans. All is moderation, but a paraula outside of all, underground humor of somriure ironic rather than riella. They can be strident, with an agut that penetrates incandescently to the ear, they seem to sound like the clear air, with the power being non-negotiable. In a certain way, the double-candy instruments of a cobla are very punk. But Roger Mas and the group are now, as of 2012, demonstrating their respective abilities to escape from soft roads, showing versatility. Roger will join the petit cobla, and will be part of the infantesa seva with the genolls pelats. If that first collaboration with the Cobla Sant Jordi Ciutat de Barcelona, reinforced by the piano of its eternal creator, Xavier Guitó, will be fruitful, this second one is magnificent.
Popular music is a set of songs that appear apparently isolated in different environments. But per sota from the surface there passes a whole series of currents that, invisible and silent, connect them. Popular music is diverse, as evidenced Roger Mas and the Cobla Sant Jordi Ciutat de Barcelona. Vol. 2 (Satellite K, 2024). The album that Roger Mas has just released, combines with the natural corprenedora the traditional “Dansa de Castellterçol” with a popular Balkan song that sounds silently interposed, “Moja Mala Nema Mane”, along with the song, “Quan tothom viurà d ‘love’, written by a chanssonier Quebec, Raymond Levesque, adapted by Joan Ollé, performed with a guitar with gypsy airs (manouche) and that it is enlaira with the great collaboration of Marina Rosell, who has made it part of her repertoire and here she sings it in a tight and concise way. They are just examples of an album that connects traditions such as the Valencian, Balearic and Catalan traditions to “Tres branques”, which in two different ways makes a composition with the life of Occitània and the Vall D’Aran, “Aqueres Montanhes”, anthem of the Vall, i “Si Canta”. He also uses the cobla to a “La Llorona” on piano that is appropriate for the jazz club, one of the aesthetic effects of the album. I cannot miss a tribute to Fabrizio De Andrè, he also presented the first album with the band, here thanks to “La Canzone dell’Amore Perduto” (melody by Telemann, 17th century). Fabrizio, one of his seus referents and artist who is an obligatory escort for Roger’s lovers.
But if there is one piece that stands out on the album, it is the superb version that Roger made of his composition “Sota Una Fina Capa de Cendra”, originally only with a guitar and magnified by a diction that sounds spoken on a piano , contrabass and drums with escombretes that evoke the perdut smoke of the ancient jazz clubs. The cobla, with a long elegant lady’s glove, adapts to the aesthetics of a song not intended to sound festive and sunny but indoors and recolliment. Això només is typical of cosmopolites in espardenyes. Those who always appeared on stage were Solsona’s fille, who did many things with the emphasis of a cultural propagandist.
