What would Federico García Lorca tell us today? How would the poet who thus avenged popular music sound in 2022? This is the starting point with which Pasión Vega (Madrid, 1976) builds his latest work. A tribute to Lorca who intends to recover his voice —of which we have no recorded testimony—, eighty-six years after his death.
Music was Lorca’s first love, before literature. He played the piano and was a great friend of Manuel de Falla. For this Pasión Vega wanted to deepen his musical roots by reinterpreting some of his most famous poems (The legend of time, La tarara, Romance of black pain, Little Viennese waltz…). “I wanted to capture the elegance and power of his verses and the musicality they emanate. And also express all the musical influences that Federico has had. She claimed flamenco, black, Cuban, Andalusian music … “, she explains in this new episode of Historia de una canción, dressed in a white lace dress. Of all the poems she has interpreted in her sound album Lorca, small Viennese waltz (Poet in New York, 1940) is the one with the most peculiar story. Loaded with images and metaphors, it was the open expression of the poet’s homosexuality. In 1986, Leonard Cohen popularized it with his famous Take this waltz, and later, it was reinterpreted by the flamenco singer Enrique Morente. “I find it amazing that a poem can have so many twists and turns without ever losing an iota of beauty or depth,” admits the artist in the video.
The idea for this album came about by chance. When three years ago she was invited to sing a tribute to the poet in Alfacar, near the place where the poet is suspected to have been killed: “There was such emotion in that act that I realized I had to save other songs.” The whereabouts of his remains remain a mystery. On this, Pasión Vega is clear: “Really, I think they didn’t want to meet. Cohen said she didn’t understand how in Spain we hadn’t started digging all over Granada to find him. This should be done with him and with all the victims of the civil war.”
How does this new version of the Little Viennese Waltz by Pasión Vega sound? How has the figure of the poet accompanied you throughout your life? Why did you want to make this tribute album to him? Pasión Vega reflects on these and other questions in this latest interview of the series ‘Historia de una canción’, an audiovisual format of EL PAÍS that discovered the story behind great songs such as On the avenue of broken dreams by Álvaro Urquijo, stuffed birds thick, Somewhereby Mikel Erentxun o Saturnby Pablo Alborán, among others.
