Jo Solana celebrates 38 years of career with “Memòria”

• “Memòria” by Jo Solana is out now
• The Barcelona-based artist, formerly known as Juanito Piquete, is celebrating 38 years in music
• The album sets music to seven Catalan poems, blending works by classic poets with voices from the libertarian underground

Very few Catalan artists can say they’ve spent 38 years making music without ever going mainstream, joining the showbiz circuit, or having a one-hit-wonder. Joan Josep Martínez Solana is one of them. In 1987, he founded Juanito Piquete y los Mataesquiroles, an underground band beloved by fans of gritty, street-level rock blended with punk, releasing four albums by 1992. Later, with DBS, he recorded two albums in the crossover style, staying active until 1997. Over the next two decades, now as Juanito Piquete, he released five full-length albums and a couple of EPs. Eventually, he felt the pull to reconnect with his teenage self, the one who first fell in love with music, and reinvented himself as Jo Solana. Now, joined by a violin and a double bass, he presents his debut album under this new identity: Memòria.

Four poets and seven songs

An act of remembering often means returning to your roots. That’s exactly what Jo Solana does in this album: a journey back in time to reconnect with the emotions stirred by the poets and poems that first sparked his passion for music. With his guitar in hand, Jo Solana lends his voice to the committed verses of Miquel Martí i Pol in “Haikus en temps de guerra” and “El Fugitiu”, alongside the Leopardi-inspired poems of Josep Maria de Sagarra, such as “El Llagut” and “Vinyes Verdes”; the raw, underground poetry of rhapsodist, artist and painter Sebastià Roure in “Blue in the Sky” and “Anem cos cansat” and the powerful “Esclaus”, written by actress and poet Rosa Maria Grau Amorós. These are seven tracks, six in Catalan and one in English, that remain fully faithful to the original texts, bravely embracing the challenge of setting long-form poetry to music in an age of 90-second reels.

In “Memòria”, poetry leads the way. The string trio, Joan Solana on guitar, Òscar Estanyol on violin, and Raül Bruna on double bass (who played guitar in the final days of Mataesquiroles over thirty years ago) approaches each piece with sincerity and humility, far removed from commercial pressures. The project also features special contributions from Antuan on keys in “Haikus en temps de guerra” and “Vinyes Verdes”, and Clàudia Segarra on violin in “El Fugitiu”.