Surrounded by memories, objects, family friends and anecdotes that evoked him as one of the greatest composers in Mexico, the book Armando Manzanero was presented at the Roberto Cantoral Cultural Center, of the Society of Authors and Composers of Mexico (SACM).
“This is a vision that we need, panoramic, but intelligent and above all responsible, which explains, perhaps in a preliminary way to Manzanero, why this book is going to initiate new ways of seeing it,” said researcher Pável Granados, author of the book’s prologue. by Enrique Martín Briceño.
He said that this book was achieved with the support of the federal Ministry of Culture, through the National Sound Library, when he was still its director. As a product of this support, the book has a series of QR codes, which will allow the reader to listen to interviews from the collection of the Mexican Radio Institute (IMER) and Canal 22, where the singer-songwriter had several participations.
The musical researcher also reflected on the legacy of the author of This Afternoon I Saw It Raining: “Master Manzanero left us, despite being such a public man, the mystery of inspiration. A mystery that we see everywhere, because wherever we go they like Manzanero’s songs, he is remembered with admiration and affection.
The editor Arturo Ávila highlighted the importance of this book as an “album”, due to its close relationship between text and images that illustrate and complement it, recovered from different archives, including those of the family of Armando Manzanero, Laura Blum, manager of the composer whose preservation work was recognized, the General Archive of the Nation, the newspaper El Heraldo de México, the Miguel Lerdo de Tejada Library, and the Estanquillo Museum.
“We can say that this work is unique in its genre because it contains a large number of visual objects that allow the reader to delve into different facets of the life of ‘Mr. Love’. “This is a book of images, of many images: the mental images that reading the texts of Pável Granados and Enrique Martin Briceño will produce in us, but in addition to the evocations of the songs of Armando Manzanero,” said the also editor of Alchemy magazine.
BETWEEN THE HISTORICAL AND THE ENJOYING
For his part, Martín Briceño described writing as “a joyful task,” in which he tried to “combine academic rigor and amenity at all times.” And he shared some fragments in which he refers to the way in which musicology has thought of Manzanero as a key character, “who mixed elements of the bolero, with arrangements of the pop ballads of the 60s”; the impact within the music industry and sentimental education in Latin America; and, finally, the polysemy of Yucatecan songs, so everyone can have their own version of it without any problem.
At the event, several anecdotes were told, which highlighted his picaresque, but kind, character; dedicated and hardworking, more contemplative and poetic. Examples of these were his attitudes towards some politicians whom he deceived by saying that he would go to the numerous tributes to which he was invited to play “for free”; and the last phrase he said to his manager before dying in 2020: “Tell them (the press) that I went to the sea.”
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Manolo Marroquín, secretary of the SACM Board of Directors, highlighted Manzanero as “an extraordinary leader of this institution, who placed the Society of Authors in the horns of the moon with his name.”
The presentation was enlivened by the singer Tania Libertad, who performed Manzanero’s songs Voy a turning off the light, That’s your problem and Below the table; The singer recalled that between the ages of 13 and 4 she had begun to work with the composer, for whom she opened her concerts in Lima.
2023-10-21 08:00:00
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