“Familiar”, “charismatic”, “presumptuous” or “a man with his feet on the ground” are some adjectives that we can hear around the figure of Familythe father of Catalan rumba, in the last program of Blood ties. Journalists, friends of the singer, artists such as Los Manolos, Soraya Arnelas and Antonio Carmona, and family members are in front of the microphones and spotlights of this documentary.
His daughter Rosita and his grandchildren Daniel and Soraya Pubill They tour the neighborhood where he lived and pay tribute to the man behind the artist on the 10th anniversary of his death, sharing unknown anecdotes and unpublished photographs of his most personal side.
Saying goodbye to your toupee
“My father was a very conceited, very elegant manHe knew how to combine a lot, he knew how to dress very well. He said that rumba is for women and to the public there is to give him the best”says his daughter Rosita for the microphones of Blood ties. Like her, the journalist Carmen Ro also attests to the importance that the king of Catalan rumba gave to his image, especially to an object that accompanied him for decades on his head: “Peret was very flirtatious, extremely flirtatious, and the greatest proof is “that toupee”.
Peret, a very flirtatious artist
The end of the toupee and the beginning of the image by which he would be known until the day of his death (“shaved head, white beard, halfway between a good-natured Buddha and a venerable patriarch“, as described by the writer Juan Puchades), would arrive, however, with the daughter’s illness.
“When I was sick, they detected the cancer and it was a very advanced cancer, I started treatment, with chemo, and I said ‘I’m not going to wait for my hair to fall out, I’m cutting it now’. And he told me: ‘Me too, that’s how we both go: I’m shaving my head too’. And He shaved with me“, says Rosita. Since then, Peret said goodbye to his toupee.
Peret’s demands on his travels
“I think that I have never lived the life of an artistnever. The cocktails, the parties… no, no, no, nothing. I am still in my neighborhood, there are few artists who can say this,” said Peret himself during an interview in 2007 for the program Zero hourOne of his managers says that the Barcelona native, despite the success he achieved outside of Spain, repeatedly rejected multi-million dollar contracts that involved crossing the pond to present his music on Latin American television for a simple reason: always stay close to your family.
However, his grandson Dani, who accompanied him as a guitarist and musical director in his last stage on stage, reveals for the program one of the most curious demands of the singer: “Coming from such a humble origin, when we toured with him, If the hotel bathroom didn’t have a bidet, he wouldn’t go.”.
The Guinness World Record for “Gypsy Sorceress”
Peret was in charge of closing ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Gamesoccasion for which he composed the theme “Gypsy Sorceress”: a review of one of her songs composed during her time as an evangelist, “Cristo tiene poder” (Christ has power). A song that, according to her grandson Dani, “she gave a thousand turns” in the recording studio. So much so that for years “Gitana hechicera” held a Guinness Record for many years: that of being the best singer in the world. the song with the most hours of study behind it.
More than 480 hours in the recording studio it took for the song to come to light as we know it today. Joan Sorribes, her sound technician, described this epic composition as follows: “‘Gitana hechicera’ holds the Guinness Record for studio hours to record a song: 485 hours! The reason is that Peret was never completely satisfied with what had been done. After a whole week of recording, on Monday, when we resumed our work, we used to listen to Peret and see how it had turned out, and the conclusion was always the same: ‘Delete everything, it’s useless‘And so we spent many hours like this, starting almost from scratch. As a good artist, Peret was very clear about what he wanted.”
The miracle of Viña Rock
Peret would live one of his most multitudinous concerts in 2008, at 72 years old, when he became the headliner of the Viña Rock Festival. The artist offered a concert for more than 70,000 peopleturning the municipality of Villarrobledo (Albacete) into an authentic Catalan rumba festival where young and old alike sang and shouted each of its lyrics.
“I remember that he was bragging about it for a long time,” says his grandson Dani. Six years later, however, We would say goodbye to him at 79 years old as a result of lung cancer, leaving a legacy of more than 250 songs as a composer and lyricist, millions of records sold and a substantial change in music, both within and outside our borders.