Pablo Guerrero


Pablo Guerrero is a Spanish singer-songwriter, lyricist and poet from the province of Extremadura who has lived in Madrid since the late 1960’s. He uses a sober and poetic style in the texts of his songs. Musically, he uses traditional harmonies and melodies from his homeland, seasoned with flamenco as well as the sounds of American folk, rock, and jazz. In the mid-1980s he introduced African rhythms and rhythms from other cultures, including avant-garde styles such as minimalism, ambient, electronic and random music. He is a singer with a long and renowned artistic career. Although he is better known as a singer-songwriter, as a poet he has been publishing continuously since 1988.
Es el amor del agua cuando quiere,
salvar la sed del hombre,
y deshoja su aroma,
en los campos blanqueados,
por la flor del espino.
Es el amor del agua, la memoria,
que hace vivos los cuerpos,
que hace vivas las nubes,
que hace vivas las selvas.
Pablo Guerrero -.
It's the love of water when it wants
to slake mans’ thirst
and shed her scent
in the bleached fields
by the hawthorn flower.
It is love of water, the memory
that brings life to bodies
that brings life to clouds
that brings life to jungles
Pablo Guerrero

Biography and Artistic Production

1946-1968

Pablo Guerrero was born into an agricultural family of small landowners on 18 October 1946 in Esparragosa de Lares in the province of Badajoz. He attended public school, "Virgen de la Cueva", in his village.  As a child, he was especially fond of reading – especially poetry. After finishing high school in Badajoz, he studied Teaching in Sigüenza where he continued to expand his literary knowledge.
At the age of 16 he was given his first guitar as a gift and began playing music with an amateur group from his school, including songs by two popular groups, Los Bravos and Los Brincos. He also played songs by popular singers from various nationalities such as Georges Moustaki, Jorge Cafrune, Joan Baez, Massiel, the Dynamic Duo, and others.
He went to Madrid to study liberal arts, specifically Literature, while at about the same time, he began to sing, but without any professional intentions, but continued to train as a musician by attending private classes. His poetic interests continued to develop with readings by Pablo Neruda, Blas de Otero, Luis Cernuda, José Ángel Valente and José Agustín Goytisolo during 1969-1978.

1969-1978

In 1969 he took his first steps as a professional into the music world when he presented himself at the Benidorm Festival with the song Amapolas y Espigas, winning first prize for best lyrics and second prize overall. This opened doors into the record industry for him thanks to and guided by Manolo Diaz, who had just founded the Action label, which had recorded the groups, Aguaviva and Vainica Doble. He recorded a single with arrangements by Ramón Farrán. On the A-side, Amapolas y Espigas, and on the B-side, Carro y Camino. Pablo Guerrero's voice is distinctive with his marked regional accent in these first single albums.
In his early days as a singer, Pablo Guerrero dedicated himself to researching Extremadura folklore. Shortly thereafter, he began to write his own lyrics such as the song Amapolas y Espigas. After his small success in Benidorm, he had to combine his career as a singer with teaching, apart from his studies of Philosophy and Letters.
His second single, arranged by Carlos Montero, further accentuated the rural character of his compositions: Son Hombres Que Se Mueren Sin Haber Visto La Mar and Por una calle de Cáceres. His next had the same musical group and continued the countryside theme in the songs; Junto al Guadiana and Al Pasar Po'l Arroyo, with lyrics by the poet Luis Chamizo. In his fourth single, there is an important change in the arrangements of Benito Lauret who used a large orchestra and choirs. The orchestrated songs are: Y Los Demás Se Fueron and Pequeño Propietario, which can be considered as Pablo Guerrero's first social protest song.
Pablo Guerrero set Miguel Hernández’s poems to music on a record that was to be called Tierra, but censorship of the time did not allow him to record it.
During the backdrop of the Spanish cultural scene during the late-sixties and early-seventies, he admired the works of Joan Manuel Serrat, Luis Eduardo Aute, Lluís Llach, Raimon, Maria del Mar Bonet, and others such as the Portuguese Amália Rodrigues and José Afonso, the French-born in Alexandria Georges Moustaki, the Belgian Jacques Brel, and South Americans Daniel Viglietti and Jorge Cafrune. He liked the Anglo-Saxon pop-rock of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the lyrics of Lou Reed.
In 1970 Pablo Guerrero collaborated as a singer in the recording of the album La Cantata del Exilio: ¿Cuándo llegaremos a Sevilla? The lyrics were written by Antonio Gómez – a professional journalist and the ideological leader of the group, Canción del Pueblo, with music by Antonio Resines, a folk-rock singer. Pablo, with his distinctive voice, sings Dulce Muchacha. Apart from Antonio Resines on guitar, voices Teresa Cano, Elisa Serna, Luis Pastor, Quintín Cabrera and the music journalist Carlos Tena also collaborated, with arrangements by Malasaña with Luis Mendo on guitar. The album was not published until 1978, however.
In 1972, Pablo Guerrero recorded his first LP, A Cántaros. The song of the same name had a quite long subtitle and quickly became one of the most important songs of freedom and liberty of the time. A Cántaros was Guerrero's first album with an urban theme.
There were also changes in the musicians for this album. One was the guitarist and arranger Nacho Sáenz de Tejada, who left aside previous orchestral embellishments and used Spanish acoustic guitars and electric guitar on two tracks. Juan Alberto Arteche, another member of Nuestro Pequeño Mundo played percussion, and Pablo Guerrero played guitars and percussions. The album was completed with the musicians José González on the organ and piano, José Maria Panizo on bass, Alex Kirschner on flute with Sáenz de Tejada, Quintanilla on violoncello and Carmen Sarabia's choirs. Both José Maria Panizo and Carmen Sarabia belonged to the mythical group, Aguaviva.
This album, A Cántaros, shows the influence of American folk musicians: Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Bob Dylan, and especially the Canadian writer and songwriter, Leonard Cohen, who left a deep mark on Guerrero's entire musical career.
On 2 March 1975 he recorded a live album at the Olympia Theatre in Paris entitled, Pablo Guerrero at the Olympia. The record would be released by Movieplay's Gong label. On it, Pablo Guerrero sings and plays the Spanish guitar, and the performance is accompanied by the guitar of Nacho Sáenz de Tejada and the double bass of Miguel Ángel Chastang. On the album he reviews some songs from previous albums, such as Buscándonos, Hoy Que Te Amo, and the popular A Cántaros, and others not included on his other albums such as Busca La Gente de Mañana, Ecos de Sociedad and Emigrante, along with two acapella songs, a work song called Trilla, and Extremadura, dedicated to his homeland. It was one of Pablo Guerrero's best-selling albums during the 1970’s.
After Olympia, Guerrero performed in the Ducal Palace in Venice, Italy. He also performed in Germany. Afterwards he traveled throughout Spain with his particular folk-style that characterized him during the seventies.
In February 1976, he recorded the album Porque Amamos El Fuego for Movieplay, a collaborative arrangement that was produced by Gonzalo García Pelayo. Musically this album makes an approach to jazz while based on the popular music of his native Extremadura. It features musicians Nacho Sáenz de Tejada and Jean Pierre Torlois on acoustic and electric guitars, jazz musicians Miguel Ángel Chastang and Antonio Perucho on double-bass and electric bass, and drums and percussion, respectively, and Antonio Pascual on keyboards. A very young Jorge Pardo collaborated with the flute and tenor sax and Antonio Fernández played the acoustic guitar in No Estés Así.
In this album he put the poem "Por Debajo Del Agua" by José Ángel Valente to music and paid tribute to the Cadiz poet Rafael Alberti in the song Ven Alberti. The musical score in Teo is composed by the singer-songwriters and arrangers, Hilario Camacho and P. Guerrero. Even though the characters that populate Guerrero's songs are usually poor and marginal while love, freedom and hope are present throughout the album. Special mention should be made of the songs Un Rincón De Sol En La Cabeza dedicated to the Carnation Revolution of April 25, 1975 in Portugal and the love song Dulce Muchacha Triste which still continues today in the Extremaduran singer's repertoire.
In December 1977, he recorded the studio album A Tapar La Calle for the label Gong, produced by Gonzalo García Pelayo, and released in 1978. The song, A Tapar La Calle, which gave the album its name, was originally a popular song from Extremadura which Pablo Guerrero transformed into a festive demand for freedom and a reminder of the tenth anniversary of the French May 1968.
From the musical point of view, the album A Tapar La Calle is an approach towards flamenco from the popular roots of Extremadura in that the guitar arpeggios derive from flamenco, but the harmonies, on the other hand, are of Extremaduran roots. In this totally acoustic album, the flamenco guitarist Miguel de Córdoba exerts a certain influence. The musical arrangements of the album are collective. The musicians for the album, A Tapar La Calle, were the following:
Miguel de Córdoba: flamenco guitar; Nacho Sáenz de Tejada: flamenco guitar y mandolin; Juan Alberto Arteche: buzuki y mandolin; Miguel Ángel Chastang: contrabass; and Javier Estrella: percussion.
Thematically it is a quite varied album, but undoubtedly his most politically and socially committed album. Although it is an album with some songs of social protest and vindication, Guerrero avoids political “pamphleteering” by using symbolic language approaching poetry, because during 1978, Spain was experiencing socially unsettled times and freedom and democracy were not yet fully established in all the pre-constitutional Spanish institutions or within society.
Protest songs are: Paraiso Ahora, A Tapar La Calle and Predicción De La Fiesta. Renewed love is found in Enredado Entre Tu Pelo, Ronda Del Anillo Dentro Del Agua, Una Tarde and Si Volvieras Otra Vez, as well as a song that summarizes the history of the closed and isolated Spain of the past, and as a song to Europe and to progress: Canción Ritual Que Habla de España, among others.

Selected discography

Albums