Javier Soto Zaragoza, University of Almeria
He Spanish dictionary The RAE defines an artist as a “person who cultivates some of the fine arts” and also as a “person who does something with utmost perfection.” In the case of Joan Manuel Serrat (Barcelona, 1943), he is an artist for cultivating, at least, two fine arts: music and poetry. And he is also one for having done it with utmost perfection. Hence, the Princess of Asturias Foundation has therefore logically awarded Serrat its 2024 Arts Prize.
The question is: where does the artistic excellence that is presupposed to those, such as Meryl Streep, Bob Dylan or Pedro Almodóvar, who are honored with this award, reside in Serrat? And why not award him, like Leonard Cohen, the Literature Prize?
Art, literature and song
I will start by answering this second question. Singer-songwriters (and few or none will ignore that Serrat is one) install their artistic work on a border, the one that exists between music and literature, since their habitual good use of the word leads their lyrics to integrate the literary system.
The songs, in fact, are made up of three texts: the lyrics, the music and the performance. For this reason, when a song lyric is very good, the mistake is sometimes made of considering it a poem, an autonomous artistic object. But a song, as Joaquín Sabina once said (who also knows a lot about that), is or should be “a mixture of good lyrics, good music, a good interpretation, a good arrangement and something else that no one knows what.” “It is, and that is the only thing that matters.”
So, in short, although we scholars can analyze the literature that exists in good song lyrics, songs are not just the text, they also need other factors to be what they are: the mixture of various fine arts.
Hence, if a singer-songwriter is awarded, he can be awarded both for the branch of the arts and, specifically, for that of letters. It’s a distinction that awards don’t usually make or, rather, don’t need to make. An example of this is the Princess of Asturias Foundation itself, which awarded one prize to Dylan and the other to Cohen for almost identical reasons. To the first, that of the Arts for its excellent combination of song and poetry; to the second, that of Letters “for a literary work that has influenced three generations around the world, through the creation of a sentimental imaginary in which poetry and music merge into an unalterable value.”
Serrat: a saddlebag full of dreams
With this clarified, I can now answer the first question I asked: why give this award to Serrat?
First of all, it must be said that the Catalan has been collecting awards of various kinds for years. But it seems to be now, that he has put an end to his career on stage, when some of the most distinguished ones have noticed him.
Not long ago he received nothing less than the Grand Cross of the Civil Order of Alfonso X the Wise; and now the Princess of Asturias. The jury of the award affirms that in Serrat’s work “the art of poetry and music are combined at the service of tolerance, shared values, the richness of the diversity of languages and cultures, as well as a necessary desire for freedom.” .
Indeed, how can we not reward the art of someone like Serrat? First of all are the quality and beauty of his lyrics, written in both Spanish and Catalan.
Can anyone deny that there is good literature in the writing of a guy who, for example, before barely turning thirty, described the sea breakwater saying “and you come and go / after kissing my village”? Who is – Rubén Darío would say – has not heard and loved “Mediterráneo” and so many other songs born from the Serratian pen?
Those shared values and desire for freedom that the jury has awarded also shine in Serrat’s lyrics, but they are benefits that are also found in the poetry he has sung.
Because many, in fact, know Serrat largely for having lent his voice to some poets, among which two authors and two albums stand out: Dedicated to Antonio Machado, poet (1969) and Miguel Hernandez (1972). In these and other works, Serrat can take credit for having contributed to the undeniable dissemination capacity of the musicalization of poetry, through which many come to know authors and texts that they would otherwise ignore.
But also, the one from Poble-sec has known how to do that job perfectly. Few have managed, for example, to get an entire crowded venue to chant Machado’s “walker, there is no path, / the path is made by walking.” And few can say that they took a section of Miguel Hernández’s “The Wounded” and created “Para la Libertad”, which became an anthem, also chanted at times – especially at other times – in an almost cathartic way.
It is difficult to record here the magnitude and significance of his figure and the merits he has achieved to be awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts. Serrat is, by popular acclaim and that of his fellow members, the dean of Spanish author songs, and this honorary title entails the receipt of distinctions like this one.
Without a doubt, in the coming days and weeks we will have the opportunity to read numerous articles and chronicles that will evaluate the granting of this prize and the figure and work of the Catalan; Although almost thirty years ago, Sabina, his friend and companion, left a good impression on them when he wrote “My cousin el Nano”, whose first verses deserve to close this article:
Javier Soto Zaragoza, Researcher and professor of Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, University of Almeria
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
