In addition to tavern and bohemian din, Joaquín Sabina’s work has the gift of generating endearing closeness. A level of proximity such that it blurs the distance between artist and faithful follower.
A Sabina fan feels much more than a hard data tracker or a mere hoarder of records and memorabilia. He feels like his friend, actually.
And that is why he was asked to accompany the Andalusian singer-songwriter this Saturday, March 18, at 9:00 p.m., when he stepped on a stage specially set up for him at the Mario Alberto Kempes stadium, as part of a brava parade.
It is that Joaquín Sabina arrives in the context of a renaissance tour whose picaresque name does not resign: “Against all odds”.
Because, indeed, Sabina will be here against all odds, as proven by the news from the almost immediate past and the recently released documentary Feeling it a lot (in theaters from Thursday, coming soon on Star+).
Feeling it a lot resulted from a 13-year process in which director León de Aranoa (Mondays in the sun, World ace) has closely followed the artist. She did it intermittently, but capturing such definitive moments, such as the fall he suffered in full concert with Joan Manuel Serrat at the WiZink Center in Madrid, in February 2020.
“They say he speaks, but we don’t know more”, the announcer of that film is heard in the film venue from Madrid, still populated by an incredulous and frightened audience.
León de Aranoa was behind the stage at that moment and did not see the incident, he only heard the silence that fell throughout the stadium and that lasted a few (but eternal) minutes. “There was a lot of love at that moment,” said the director at a festival presentation of the documentary and about the public’s vigil waiting for news.
Sabina, meanwhile, assured that she did not remember too much. She doesn’t know if she tripped or if she stepped into some wires, but she does know that she woke up the next morning and was told that she had starred in a typical ambulance plus operating room movie sequence.
Joaquín Sabina and an undignified old age
The concrete thing is that, since then, nobody gave two cents for the possibility that the most Argentine of Spanish singer-songwriters could go on tour again. But in that instance he finds himself, with a certain fragility and with the sensations whitened in Feeling it a lot piggyback.
“I have a problem with the guy in the bowler hat offstage,” he is heard in the film, alluding to his distinctive wardrobe feature every time he goes out to win over the audience.
“He was pretty brainless. Sex, drugs and rock & roll… It lasted until I was 50, not bad…”, he adds later and before concluding that “life on stage is precious, simply because it’s not life”.
“It is something else better than life: success, glory, courage”, he rounds off.
And finally, he gives a diagnosis of the terms in which he reached the present time: “I have gone from adolescence to old age without touching maturity.”
“I have always proposed to grow old without dignity”, completes Sabina. And when asked by De Aranoa about whether she has achieved it, she says that “Yes, totally.”
Thus, the follower who does not recognize barriers, because the work of his flagship artist suggests it, not only meets his reborn friend. He also does it with an imputable man who interprets his wandering and endearing hymns, not always emotionally correct, no matter how misaligned they sound to the new sociocultural paradigm.
But although his classics survive the prevailing whiff of the Middle Ages, Joaquín Sabina does not insist on being on the left for the mere fact of being on the left.
A lot had to do with “the drift of the Latin American left,” as he explained when the tour “Against all odds” began.
“This drift breaks my heart, precisely because it has been so far to the left. But now I’m not so much anymore, because I have eyes, ears and a head to see the things that are happening. And it is very sad ”, he concluded without having to clarify that this disenchantment makes him a bulwark“ of the right ”.
“Although the other day, thinking, I realized that I was too pessimistic: there are also good things, like the Covid vaccine, which has arrived quickly and well. Lula has also beaten Bolsonaro, who is not bad, and an extraordinary hero has appeared, who is (Volodimir) Zelensky (president of Ukraine). Little more, ”he added.
Joaquín Sabina and the obscenity of teaching the soul
Back to Feeling it a lotJoaquín Sabina said “This is the most obscene thing” he has ever done.
“On stage I have sometimes shown my ass, but in this documentary I have shown my soul. This documentary saved me from doing nothing ”, she later based on a material that, at the end, demands that they not confuse a small dish of salt with another of cocaine. “Don’t believe anything else… This is salt, salt to salivate,” she blurts out, again, between laughs.
According to the official promotion of the documentary, this film covers all of Joaquín Sabina’s settings: public and private, bright and hidden.
“It is a journey through the keys of his life and his work, for what moves him, for what inspires him and for what hurts him; always developed from living situations shared between Joaquín and Fernando”, he adds.
“This film is a strange privilege that, as a filmmaker, I would like to share with the public: to spend some time alone with Joaquín when he is not Sabina”, pointed out Fernando León de Aranoa.
“13 years ago I started shooting with him, accompanying him on a daily basis, in rehearsals, tours and in his environment to portray the artist at his best and worst moments. And to his personality, so linked to his work and his creativity. It has been a lot of fun, ”he relieved.
“I always wanted to talk about things that had to do with his creativity, with his inspiration,” he said in dialogue with Télam. In other words, I never wanted to make a biographical/testimonial documentary where many other very wise people talked about their relationship with Joaquín or analyzed his music, but I wanted him to tell himself and tell himself in relation to his art. , with what he needs to express, with that perception of life so intense”.
“I tried to somehow capture that elusive thing that is the inspiration and creativity of an artist. It is what I was most interested in telling because it is what fascinates me the most and dazzles me about Joaquín ”, he concluded.
Feeling it a lot shows Joaquín Sabina on the surface, with his pants off, without a filter. After all, in the same version that will appear in our World Cup stadium, only here it will be in the company of a band made up of Antonio García de Diego (piano, guitar), Jaime Asua (guitar), Borja Montenegro (guitar), Josemi Sagaste (sax), Pedro Barceló (drums), Mara Barros (voice) and Laura Gómez Palma (bass).
Pancho Varona, a historic side, who expressed his surprise and pain at not having been called up for this tour, will not be in that formation. And in doing so, he used the ambivalent rhetoric that the main artist used for his recent moves: “Joaquín Sabina has decided, against all odds, not to have me on his next tour.”
“I want to thank you with all my heart for the 100 songs that we wrote together, the 40 tours that I accompanied him on and the 15 albums on which I was his producer,” added Varona on his network profiles.
The musician added in the note with his signature that “although I will not be on this tour, I want to tell all of you who have been accompanying me for 40 years that I will always be on every stage with you. Millions of thanks and all my love! Feeling it a lot”.
Joaquín Sabina will arrive in Córdoba after having offered two shows at the Movistar Arena in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Crespo. In a venue of the city that has inspired him, that has gone through him sentimentally to the point of filtering its vibration into With the withered forehead, when they talk to me about destiny, Buenos Aires o Dieguitos and Mafaldas, among other. Or the one that has served as a ceiling for creative and polytoxicomic adventures with Charly García, Fito Páez, Andrés Calamaro and Diego Armando Maradona.
Now it’s Córdoba, where there is also a tradition of memorable concerts and abandoned bars at dawn.
Joaquín Sabina comes, a friend who is blamed, but who riots before the farewell. One who sees himself as “an old sea lion with sublimated emotions in the form of a song, who endorses the maritime tradition that says that the captain will be the last person to leave the ship before the shipwreck”.
El show
This Saturday, March 18, at 9:00 p.m. and at the Mario Alberto Kempes stadium, Joaquín Sabina will offer a show as part of his “Against all odds” tour. The doors will open at 18. Tickets sold out.
More information
From Serrat and Sabina to Soda Stereo: tours that change names and never end