Genius and wit, innate talent and tireless worker, jazz legend with a private life as unique as the music he played on the piano, the figure of Tete Montoliu (1933-1997) constituted a milestone, as he became the man who brought jazz to our country in the fifties, when only a few understood appreciated that music born and raised among the black population of the United States, with which Tete identified from his youth. "When I hear a black person shouting 'Black is beautiful', I want to shout 'Visca l'Empordà!' which is more or less the same", said Tete. Now a book allows us to retrace his life from the perspective of all the people who lived with the brilliant pianist, one of the greats of both jazz and Catalan music, whose legacy, in the words of promoter Julio Martí, is can compare with that of Thelonius Monk, Bill Evans, Pau Casals, Andrés Segovia or Enric Granados. Martí is one of the many names that appear in 'Round about Tete, by Pere Pons (Libros del Kultrum), a multifaceted look at Montoliu's life, reflected in schoolmates, friends, lovers, musicians, journalists, photographers or programmers .
Like so many geniuses, Tete Montoliu had a life full of contradictions. The talent he showed on the piano was supported by a private life marked by blindness that made him dependent on others, a situation that sometimes turned into contempt for other people. Born in a time when blind people were considered purely and simply useless, Montoliu was lucky enough to fall into the hands of Petri Palou, a disciple of Ricard Vinyes, who agreed to teach piano to a blind person after consulting with Maestro Frederic Mompou, who at the same time spoke to Joaquín Rodrigo. "It only requires will", replied the author of the Aranjuez Concert. "He worked every day, dedicated 100% to jazz, that's why he didn't share the work", explains Pere Pons, and points out that Tete was very clear that he was not given anything, especially after traveling abroad, to Denmark, Holland, Germany, where "sometimes he came home crying because of the demands he made on himself and the treatment others gave him".
Discovered by vibraphonist Lionel Hampton during a visit to Barcelona to perform at the Hot Club, Montoliu was able to play like a black man, and to do so in a way that no musician in the United States could think of or, like Tete himself he said, "I play music from my country, but with a little more swing".
His marriage to the Cuban Pilar Morales forced him to taste the bitter taste of the prejudices of the middle classes in Barcelona, among whom he lived in his apartment at Carrer Muntaner 83. Although he already had a master's degree in prejudices, conferred by blindness which he suffered from childhood and which forced him to delve into the facet of performer, because unlike his colleagues, he could not work as an arranger, since he could not see the roles. His talent, cultivated during thousands of hours of listening and practice, allowed him to learn the scores by ear and interpret them with any formation without the need to rehearse. "Tete said that rehearsals conditioned his originality", remembers Pere Pons, "for him rehearsal was not to play, but to talk to the other person, to know how he thinks, what he reads, how he sees life", a human approach to from which he interpreted the musical codes of jazz. "If they only talk about music, women and football, what stories can they tell when they play?" Tete lamented to Antonio Narváez, his road manager.
And speaking of prejudices, another one he could not suffer was what he felt about the Catalan people. "I'm not Spanish, I'm Catalan, and Catalans are the blacks of Europe," he said. Montoliu reflected this sign of identity in the jazz interpretation of classics of Catalan music such as La dama d'Aragó or El testament d'Amèlia and in his approach to the components of the new song, among them a Joan Manuel Serrat with whom he would forge a lifelong friendship after they met when the still young Noi del Poble Sec accompanied his father, a boiler repairman, to do the maintenance of the one Tete had at home.
With a reputation for being sarcastic, wasteful and egotistical, the witnesses who appear in the book give opposite images, from the admiration they profess to Horacio Fumero, his double bass player for many years, or Valentí Grau, founder of the JazzCava de Terrassa, who he defines him as "our Messi", until the rejection of the one who suffered his worst image, as was the case of Anna Mas, who as head of the Jamboree dealt with him. "He was not a good person", he says in the book.
The positive side of this character was his infinite ability to play at home with the musicians he liked, surrounded by thousands of records whose situation he knew every word of. Also his acid sense of humor or his passion for Barça, which gave rise to the legend that he followed the matches with a headset while playing, or his interest in the arts. He commissioned braille translations of several literary works, including Cien años de soledad, a passion that once brought him into conflict with ONCE. Montoliu distrusted the association which, ironically, was the only one that, after the pianist's death, opened a space dedicated to his memory as the best jazz pianist south of the Pyrenees.
Claiming his figure is the main objective of the new work by Pere Pons, designed to demonstrate that the figure of Tete "is not an artifice", as the witnesses of his artistic career explain, and to highlight the importance he has had, according to the opinion of cultural voices such as Muñoz Molina, Espinàs, Fernando Trueba or Ignasi Terraza. "It could be as important as Albéniz, Granados or Pau Casals", states Pere Pons, and expresses his wish that one day the book will also be translated into Braille, the last tribute to this spoiled child of jazz, a seeker of reasons and a snitch who, if he didn't leave a good memory for everyone, at least he knew how to forgive with universal music.
