The Musical Nature of the Beast

Face it: Is there any city on earth that can compete with Barcelona’s fascination with fantastic imaginary beasts? Outsized artisan-crafted creatures march through our streets during the festival of Santa Eulàlia, unicorns protrude from cathedral walls in the Ciutat Vella and prints by Picasso and Miró maintain beguiling charms after decades.

Not to be left out, The New Catalan Ensemble has just released a CD and book set, Bestiari (Seed Music, 2019) that mightily enriches Barcelona’s beastly artistic legacy.

This album is a departure from the band’s previous two recordings, Enlightened Ruralism and Things that are Called but not Named. Both reflected a sophisticated integration of traditional Catalan instruments (particularly woodwinds like the gralla, tarota and tible, the core instruments of traditional cobla bands) with renditions of jazz standards à la Gershwin, as well as original pieces with the tonal colors and rhythms of Catalan folk music.

Created as a septet and led by woodwind player Manu Sabate, The New Catalan Ensemble (aka NEW CAT) sprouted as a jazzy offshoot of a cobla band, similar to the New Orleans-style reedy, rowdy, street bands, such as the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. In its latest works, the ensemble has evolved into more of a jazzy, New Music, classically-flavored band, one that can hardly fit into one label. The unclassifiable composer upon whom the band has depended for much of its contemporary repertoire, Joan Díaz, is also a highly eclectic keyboardist and his presence looms larger than ever on Bestiari.

Previously, the band arranged and strikingly performed lyrical poems by classic Catalan bards, such as Joan Salvat-Papasseit. The lyrics of Bestiari come from one extraordinary Catalan poet, Josep Carner, whose works are tiny, witty, often ironic meditations on human frailties, dramatized through the personalities of fantastic creatures. In 1964, he published a series of “beast” poems (154 in total!), 22 of which are set to music on this album. The first is called “Bees” and here is its last stanza:

Our queen already said:

Here, this is how to collect pollen:

for us, the task,

for others, pleasures

For all the apparent simplicity of these poems, they are best understood by grown-up children who can appropriately appreciate their sly political and psychological undertones. Díaz has dressed these little lyrics in ways that evoke Disney’s cartoon creatures — or better yet, Miro’s protoplasmic forms. It’s no surprise that Díaz has found success in composing film scores and this tendency also reflects the ways that fantastic art has catalyzed his musical imagination, as it did with his album Dalirogena, which was based on Dalí paintings.

In Bestiari, Carner’s poems are unfolded in novel music implications. First, each of the poems is dramatically recited by one of two prominent Catalan stage and screen actors, Clara Segura and Pere Arquillué. Then, various members of the New Catalan Ensemble instrumentally and vocally offer miniature musical dramatizations that underscore the poetry’s deep meanings. If you’ve seen a giant dragon snake its way through our narrow streets on a festival day, you’ll love the mock-martial spirit of the band’s evocation of “El Drac.” Blaring, overblown woodwinds float menacingly above war-like percussion. It is spooky, entertaining and just plain, well, funky and festive. The mythological Phoenix is regaled through a cryptic Egyptian-sounding melody that is as dreamily mysterious as the dragon piece is rousingly roiling.

The gorgeously illustrated book that is packaged with this CD has the texts of Carner’s 22 poems in Catalan. But if you find poetry a tough read even in English, look into Mary Ann Newman’s Carner translation in Barcelona Bestiary (Triangle Books).

This music will bring out the beasts in you – and is a charming addition to the art and architecture that possess a beastly grandeur upon our city.

Norman Weinstein is a poet and critic and the author of “A Night in Tunisia: Imaginings of Africa in Jazz.” He is searching for a collaborator for translations of the poetry of Joan Salvat-Papasseit. He can be emailed at nweinstein25@gmail.com