Lluís Llach

Lluís Llach in November 2006

Lluís Llach i Grande [ ʎuˈis ʎak ] (born May 7, 1948 in Girona , Catalonia , Spain ) is a Catalan songwriter , singer of the Nova Cançó and writer.

Because of his commitment against the Franco dictatorship , especially against its suppression of Catalan culture, he was banned from performing in Spain and went into exile in Paris . After the end of the dictatorship, he returned. His best-known song L'Estaca ("The Stake"), composed in 1968, is considered a symbolic song for the fight against political oppression.

childhood

Llach was born in 1948 into a middle-class family in Girona and spent his entire childhood in Verges in the Baix Empordà . His father was a country doctor and came from a large estate in the area. His mother was a teacher and came from Barcelona . Together with his older brother Josep Maria, Lluís enjoyed a middle-class upbringing. The mother brought the musical moment into the family. Lluís and his brother play their mother's guitar. A piano is also available to the two boys in the house. Lluís composed his first melodies at the age of six and seven. In 1965 Lluís (melody) and his brother Josep Maria (text) published their first song together: Que feliç era, mare ('How happy I was, mother'). Lluís Llach studied music at the conservatory, among other places.

The early artistic phase

In 1967 Lluís Llach made his debut as a singer as a member of the La Nova Cançó Catalana movement in the group Els Setze Jutges (The Sixteen Judges). The La Nova Canço movement , which also includes songwriters such as Joan Manuel Serrat and Raimon , emerged in response to the discrimination and oppression of the Catalan language and culture in the Spanish unitary state after the Spanish civil war. Within this group, Lluís Llach opted for the line of "openly exposing" the political situation in Frankist Spain. This had a very strong influence on his further artistic career. After great success, he appeared as a soloist in the Palau de la Música Catalana in Barcelona in 1969 . He became one of the best chansonniers with tremendous popularity.

Appearances in Cuba, South America and Madrid followed. The performances in Madrid in particular resulted in the regime's censorship and a four-year performance ban in Spain. Lluís Llach emigrated to France and gave numerous concerts there - especially at the "Olympia" in Paris. During this phase he integrated and adapted many elements of the French chanson into his work. In 1975 he was arrested after a concert in Barcelona and was again banned from performing in Spain for eight months.

L'Estaca

When Franco died in the autumn of 1975, the Catalan language and culture flourished again at first cautiously, but with steadily increasing self-confidence. The previously forbidden language was spoken again in newspapers and leaflets, on the radio and in public events. In 1976 - over a year after Franco's death - the still existing censorship authority allowed seven Llach concerts in Barcelona. His song L'Estaca from 1968 was well known in Catalonia during the dictatorship of Franquism . The song is about a stake that needs to be removed. The stake (Catalan l'estaca ) symbolizes l'estat , the state.

"...

I press here and you move away.

That's how we get the stake off the spot

will fall, fall, fall

throw him rotten and lazy to the dirt.

... "

(Excerpt from the German-language adaptation of the song by Oskar Kröher , which largely corresponds to the statement in the Catalan original version)

Llach did not sing the song in public, he played the accompanying chords and hummed the melody, whereupon the audience broke out in thunderous applause. Then, while the song was gently hummed along, thousands of candles were lit and moved to the rhythm of the music. The song, which had been banned until then, was allowed to be heard in public for the first time. On November 11, 2019 at around 4 p.m. Lluis Llach voted for the song L'Estaca on the stage of the occupied A7 motorway near the Catalan border crossing “La Jonquera ”to France in northern Catalonia again.

The figure of Avi Siset in L'Estaca

The main character of the lyrics, Avi Siset ('Grandpa Siset'), has the nickname or short form of the Catalan given name Narcís (Siset). The figure is based on a real person, Narcís Llansa, who was the maternal grandfather of Ponç Feliu, a close childhood friend of Lluís Llachs. In a summer in the early 1960s, the adolescent Lluís Llach met this Narcís Llansa, an old Catalan republican who was a hairdresser in Besalú . He told Lluís stories from his youth when they were fishing in Verges am Ter . Lluís was fascinated by this old, combative man who repeatedly campaigned for the democratization of Spain. In his song Llach created this Narcís Llansa in Grandpa Siset. The Avi Siset of this song stands for the experienced person who knows that every dictator and every dictatorship has come to an end. He is the one who carefully and deliberately undermines injustice regimes and gives others the patience and courage to endure such regimes and work carefully towards their end.

Translation into Polish

The song became known as a hymn against all oppression and against all oppressors outside of Catalonia.

The Polish songwriter Jacek Kaczmarski was inspired by Llachs L'Estaca and, in 1978, composed an independent Polish text with the song Mury (Walls) , which retains the melody of Llachs L'Estaca . The content refers to walls that are brought down by a mass of people and bury the old world. A singer leads this crowd with his song and gets them to tear down the walls. In the end, however, he is alone again. Kaczmarski himself pointed out his skepticism towards the masses who can wrest control of his work from an artist. The song became a hymn of Solidarność and was sung , for example, during the strike at the Lenin shipyard in August 1980 and later became the theme song for Radio Solidarność . Kaczmarski also took up the fact that the forbidden song was still hummed in Catalonia by singing "sama melodia bez słów niosła ze sobą starą treść" ("the melody itself without words carries the old content"). Translated into Belarusian by Andrej Chadanowitsch in 2010 , the song became an anthem for the protests in Belarus in 2020 .

politics

In 2012 he was a co-founder of the civil rights movement Assemblea Nacional Catalana, which seeks the independence of Catalonia. In the election for the Catalan Parliament (2015) he took first place in the electoral alliance Junts pel Sí for the province of Girona.

On the complete works and on the discography

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Singles

Kosovo   IT 10 06/05/1999 (6 weeks) Que tinguem sort   IT 15th 05/06/2012 (2 weeks)

In addition to many of his own texts, Lluís Llach has also set texts by well-known Catalan poets such as Joan Salvat-Papasseit , Joan Oliver , Josep Maria de Sagarra , Màrius Torres and Miquel Martí i Pol .

Many of the chansons performed by Lluís Llach have achieved extraordinary popularity. This includes the following titles:

• L'Estaca ('The Stake')
• El Bandoler ('The Highwayman')
• La Gallineta ('The Little Chicken')
• Si arribeu ('When you arrive')
• I si canto trist ('And when I sing sadly')
• Que tinguem sort (' May we be lucky')
• Fills d'Hiroshima ('Children of Hiroshima')
• Ítaca ('Itaka')
• Vaixell de Grècia ('The Ship from Greece')
• Jo també he dormit a l'alba ('I also slept at daybreak')
• Insubmís ('Not submissive')

Lluís Llach has released the following LPs and CDs:

• Els èxits de Lluís Llach (1968)
• Ara i aquí (1970)
• Com un arbre nu (1972)
• Lluís Llach a l'Olympia (1973)
• I si canto trist ... (1974)
• Viatge a Ítaca (1975)

• Barcelona, ​​gener de 1976 (1976)
• Campanades a morts (1977)
• El meu amic, el mar (1978)
• Somniem (1979; ES: gold)
• Verges 50 (1980; ES: gold)
• I amb el somriure, la revolta (1982; ES: gold)
• T'estimo (1984)
• Maremar (1985)
• Camp del Barça, 6 de juliol de 1985 (1985)
• Astres (1986)
• Geografia (1988; ES: gold)
• La forja de un rebelde (BSO) (1990)
• Torna Aviat (1991)
• Ara, 25 anys en directe (1992)
• Un pont de mar brava (1993; ES: gold)
• Rare (1994)
• Porrera (1995)
• Nu (1997)
• 9 (1998)
• Temps de revoltes (2000)
• Jocs (2002)
• Junts (2003)
• Poetes (2004)
• Que no s'apague la llum (together with Feliu Ventura 2005)
• i. (2006)
• Verges 2007 (2007)

Awards for music sales

Country / Region	gold	platinum	Sales	swell
Awards for music sales (country / region, awards, sales, sources)
Spain (Promusicae)	5 × gold5	-	250,000	elportaldemusica.es ES1 ES2
All in all	5 × gold5	-

Awards for books

• 2016: Prix ​​Méditerranée Étranger for Les yeux fardés

Fonts (selection)

• The women of La Principal. Novel. Translated from the Catalan by Petra Zickmann. Insel, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-458-17672-5 .

literature

• Liedercircus (song books from the kunter-bund-edition vol. 4), Mainz, ISBN 978-3-7957-5652-9 (on page 89 the song L'estaca is in the original text with another translation and the singable German adaptation by Oss Kröher published)
• Interview: Lluís Llach. In: Torsten Eßer, Tilbert D. Stegmann (ed.): Catalonia's return to Europe 1976–2006. Lit, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8258-0283-7 , pp. 205-208.
• Joan Carles Doval (Ed.); Joaquim Vilarnau (texts): La nova CANÇÓ 1965–1982. Avui, Barcelona 2007, ISBN 978-84-96767-65-2 (first 1986, 18 CDs with extensive accompanying material; the series was available in 2007 as a supplement to the Sunday edition of the Catalan magazine AVUI).

swell

1. ↑ Liedercircus - song books from the kunter-bund-edition vol. 4, p. 89.
2. ↑ Gemma Liñán: Lluís Llach, amb Tsunami Democràtic: Canta a l'escenari del tall de l'autopista (photo and video). In: www.elnacional.cat (online newspaper). November 11, 2019, accessed November 11, 2019 (Catalan). 
3. ↑ Information from: Joan Carles Doval (ed.); Joaquim Vilarnau (texts): La nova CANÇO 1965–1982. Avui, Barcelona 2007, ISBN 978-84-96767-65-2 .
4. ↑ Consensus i unitat per impulsar l'Assemblea Nacional Catalana. In: Llibertat.cat , April 30, 2011 (Catalan).
5. ↑ Ponç Feliu: Els rebesnéts de l'avi Siset older a Fontajau. In: El Punt Avui , September 26, 2012 (Catalan).
6. ↑ Chart sources: ES

Web links

• Gantenbein's page on Lluís Llach ( Memento from December 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) (with audio samples and translations)