Anyone who studied Spanish in Europe in the late 60s or early 1970s will have heard this album, and a great many, like me, will have bought it. It is a simply a collection of twelve poems by the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado, sung by the inimitable Catalan cantautor Joan Manuel Serrat. On the back of this work Serrat was awarded First Prize in a 2000 competition organised by the Fundación Española Antonio Machado for the promotion of Machado’s work.

Not that Machado’s poetry needs much promotion. I was never quite sure, and the doubt remains to this day, which I prefer here: Machado’s words, or Serrat’s arrangements and performance. It’s probably the case that the result is greater than the sum of its parts, and for me the effect has always been mesmerising. I do have to say that Serrat went on to make a similar album based on the work of Góngora that did nothing at all for me, but then I was never much of a Góngora fan.

I did my first degree in English and Spanish Literature, so this was in a sense both work and play, and if I had not spoken Spanish at this stage it is unlikely that I would have engaged with it. But engage I did, and it is an album that has never strayed far away from me. Just one example, and `I could have pulled out many: whenever I have heard Machado’s predictive words in Cantares: Murió el poeta lejos del hogar / Le cubre el polvo de un país vecino I have wondered which country’s dust will one day cover me. Now, I suppose, it is increasingly likely that it will be Patagonian dust for me rather than the dust that was to cover the exiled Machado in Collioure.

The album, Serrat’s second, was made immediately after his conflict with Eurovision 1968, in which he withdrew and was replaced at the last moment because he was prevented from singing in Catalan. Ironic, perhaps, that this, together with Mediterráneo,  his two best selling albums, should have been recorded in Spanish but he did achieve fantastic coverage with it, not just for himself but also for Machado.

NB The cover art I have included is that put out in the UK – there are several others out there.

Track listing

Cantares
Retrato
Guitarra del meson
Las moscas
Llanto y coplas
La saeta
Del pasado efímero
Españolito
A un olmo seco
He andado muchos caminos
En Colliure
Parábola

All lyrics by Antonio Machado, guitar and voice by Joan Manuel Serrat