The Sóller branch of the Obra Cultural Balear celebrates its 15th anniversary at MUCBO with glosas and the poetry of Robert Graves.
Last Friday, August 7, around seventy people gathered at MUCBO to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the founding of the Sóller branch of the Obra Cultural Balear. The evening, entitled “From Graves to Glosa: Musical Conversations between the Verses of Robert Graves and Improvised Oral Poetry”, was a gathering in which the English poetic tradition, poetry in Catalan, and the full richness of Mallorcan oral poetry in the form of glosas came together.
During the performance, Thomas Graves, son of the poet who settled in Deià, recited in English a selection of poems, many of them written in Mallorca or inspired by his life in the Serra. After each poem, Margalida Miró, Antoni Rigo and Àngel Terrón recited their Catalan translation, which then served as the inspiration for glosadors Mateu “Xurí”, Miquel Àngel Adrover and the Sóller-born Cati Eva Canyelles, who improvised glosas on the spot based on the English author’s texts. All of this was accompanied by the exquisite guitar playing of Alicia Olivares and Thomas Graves himself.
One of the most moving moments came when both the audience and the family members present were able to hear Robert Graves’s own voice reciting his poems, thanks to recordings that his son Thomas brought especially for the occasion. It was a true showcase of poetic and musical talent organized by the Obra Cultural Balear and the collective Arrel’Art Cultura Escènica, as part of the XI En Viu-U programme, Sóller’s Performing Arts Showcase.
The event was supported by MUCBO, which provided a bar service offering wines and cold drinks to help attendees cope with the intense heat, as well as a selection of tapas specially prepared for the occasion.
