Gerard Quintana
| Gerard Quintana Rodeja | |
|---|---|
Quintana in 2007
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| Background information | |
| Also known as | "El Mick Jagger català" (The Catalan Mick Jagger) |
| Born |
27 November 1964 Girona, Catalonia, Spain |
| Genres | Rock, rock català, pop |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, songwriter, writer, poet, actor |
| Years active | 1986–present |
| Website | www |
Gerard Quintana Rodeja (Catalan pronunciation: [ʒəˈɾart kinˈtanə]) (born 27 November 1964, in Girona, Catalonia, Spain) is a Catalan singer, songwriter, poet, writer, actor, and radio and TV personality. He first came to prominence in 1986-2001 as the lead singer of the rock band Sopa de Cabra. Sopa de Cabra was one of the leading bands of the rock català genre. Since the dissolution of the band in 2001, he has pursued a very successful solo career. As a singer/songwriter independent of his extensive input into the original musical repertoire of Sopa de Cabra, he completed 5 well-received albums between 2003 and 2010, together with 3 in collaboration with Jordi Batiste, and a recent album (2014) with Xarim Aresté. His solo work from 2003-10 reveals a personal and intimate style which is not easily classified, but may, perhaps, be characterised as poetry and music about the human condition. He also writes and publishes poetry, and has written regularly as a journalist for online Catalan newspapers and journals. He has published two books and appeared in the film Diogenes, the dog.
During the temporary reunion of Sopa de Cabra in 2011 to celebrate 25 years since the band's formation and ten since its final appearances, Quintana reverted to his original rock-star style of singing and performance, and his most recent work (2013-4), in collaboration with Xarim Aresté and a new supporting line-up, continues that approach. Quintana is a very articulate and charismatic speaker, and has become a well-known figure in Catalan culture quite apart from his musicianship. In recent years he has expressed his personal political and ideological views, including his support for Catalan independence.
In the mid-1980s, Quintana was a member of a group of young musicians, writers and artists based on a squat in Girona. His role was initially more as a writer, both of poetry and in the journalistic sphere of producing fanzines, than as a singer and performer. Indeed, in a magazine interview published in 2010, Quintana revealed that in spite of his lifelong deep love of music, his initial youthful ambition was to be a writer, because as a child he was far too shy to contemplate performing in public. He was involved with the bands Hasta los huevos de Mili and Ninyin's Mine Workers' Union band before the formation of Sopa de Cabra in the summer of 1986, when he became the new group's lead singer, as well as the most prolific writer of lyrics for its original repertoire. The influences on Sopa de Cabra's style included classic rock (the band's name was in homage to the Rolling Stones' 1973 album Goat's Head Soup), reggae, and blues, but the combination of the Catalan language and the creative originality of Quintana and his colleagues (Josep Thió, Joan 'Ninyín' Cardona, Francesc 'Cuco' Lisicic, and Pep Bosch) ensured that the band's sound was unique: authentic rock music and yet distinctively Catalan.
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