He had to spend 40 years on stage to decide to publish a live album, which he called Celebration. This festive title draws the humor with which Sole Giménez talks about his projects in a hotel in Barcelona while staying on top of things, now that he has been pursuing his solo career for longer than he spent with Presuntos Implicados. Two stages that come together in the tour that brings it to the Palau de la Música (next Friday the 26th) to kick off a new edition of the Guitar BCN festival, which will offer thirty concerts throughout the first half of the year.
“I'm not the only one who turns 40 in music, many people who were able to hear those songs and who are now reunited with them, or who have followed this whole journey, also turn 40,” reflects the Valencian singer-songwriter and composer, happy to recover contact with your audience. “I usually go out to sign records, there you see the people, their ages, their tastes, and they tell you their memories with the songs, when their children were little, when they were dating. You see that you have belonged to many people's lives in some way, and that seems like a luxury to me.”
These concerts also represent a look back for Sole Giménez, who has introduced Presuntos Implicados songs into his repertoire that he had not played in a long time and that he adds to hits such as Mil Maripas, Alma de blues or the incombustible How We Have Changed. “When I left Presuntos I also left a lot of repertoire because the group continued with another singer.” Some songs that now return with his incombustible jazz voice and that "make you remember, I have come across some songs as if they were old friends, to which I can give life again and tell them: how nice it is to be able to meet!"
Remembrance brings with it those years in which Giménez tasted fame as the vocalist of Presuntos to discover that it had a bittersweet taste: “At first it was hard, then you get used to everything, in fact I'm still used to it.” Her first performance on television was on Directísimo with José María Iñigo, a program followed by 17 or 18 million people, at a time when three or four visits to the small screen were enough for her face to be known to everyone. parts. “I always had to live with eyes stuck in the back of my head, and it's not pleasant because you want to have your independence, your freedom, get angry one day or have four drinks with your friends.”
Public exhibition is, perhaps, the hardest part of being an artist for Sole Giménez, “many people like it, but I find it tiring.” That is why in her solo career she has sought balance, “because I never really wanted to be a singer, I never had the spirit of a protagonist, it seemed like a lot of responsibility, and I am already quite responsible.”
This disinterest contrasts with the precocity with which this Valencian by adoption (she was born in Paris) made her first steps singing in the church choir. “I would love to return to a choir, to do voices and impato, to do something so beautiful together.” From those early years she also got her composer vein, not always valued in women. “As a child I immediately started writing poems and putting them to music. When I left the choir I started a group of girls where I played the guitar and composed an Our Father. I put it to music! She was very daring.” That's why when her brother gave her some melodies at the beginning of Presuntos "it seemed natural to me to try to put words to it."
This is how she became the composer of a good part of the songs in the first stage of the group, with songs where she told about her life. “But because I was a woman, no one expected me to do anything other than sing, take care of myself and dance,” she laments. “No one asked me if I composed or wrote, even today many people don't know that I wrote the lyrics to How We Have Changed.” A lack of appreciation for the work of women that Giménez extends to the entire world of music: “Women authors and composers have not been talked about because they are not expected to be a woman, the same as a woman is not expected to be be a pilot or an engineer.”
To this handicap, the Valencian artist adds ageism, “which in music weighs a lot, because they will always prefer someone younger than you. Even if you are successful, you are already getting older, they limit you to a more adult audience, you no longer appear on the radio.” As the years go by, female names disappear, “there are hardly any older women, apart from Luz [Casal] or Ana [Belén], it is difficult for me to find others,” and access is not easy either because “girls who begin to study guitar they do not finish their degree, or they do not see themselves playing in a group, there are no references and they are surrounded by boys.” Although the most worrying thing is that the industry “is still led by men who choose artists with their own label. The vision of women as managers, as prescribers to decide which artist they like the most, which one they support on the radio, is missing.”
These circumstances have little effect, however, on a long-career artist who admits not listening to music outside the studio because it doesn't allow her to rest. “If I hear a song I'm immediately looking at the type of harmony, where the melody goes, what it's doing with the voice, what could be improved,” she explains with a smile. That's why she reserves herself for her own songs, which she will perform at the Palau before traveling to Valencia to close a tour that is, above all, a great celebration.
