The authors
Joan Linux
Editor and Photographer
Joan “Linux” Martínez i Serres (Barcelona 1972) is a photographer and editor. For more than two decades he has documented the blues scene and other live musics, notable among his work being his role as official photographer of the Festival de Blues de Barcelona. A driving force behind several publishing projects related to photography and culture, he is the creator and coordinator of 40 anys de blues a Barcelona, a work conceived in 2020 that combines oral memory, historical documentation and photographic portraiture. All the photographs of the musicians included in this publication have been taken by the author in the studio and using photochemical photographic processes.
You can find out more about the author at: https://about.pocallum.cat
Manuel López Poy
Texts
Manuel López Poy —Sarria (Lugo), 1958— is a journalist and the author of books such as Camino a la libertad, historia social del blues; Todo Blues; Los días azules, historias de blues; Entre el cielo y el infierno, efemérides del blues, and Blues, la novela gráfica.
He edits the Anuario de Blues, published by the Societat de Blues de Barcelona, and is the scriptwriter of documentaries such as Barnablues, la història del blues a Barcelona and Hondarribia Crossroads. He is also the author of works of fiction such as the collection of stories Aires de tormenta, and is a writer of graphic novels.
For 40 anys de Blues a Barcelona he has written the biographies of all the musicians portrayed in it, combining journalistic rigour with blues passion to give voice to a scene he has known at first hand since its origins.
Ricky Gil
Translation and proofreading
Ricky Gil (Barcelona, 1965) was the person responsible for the translation and proofreading of the biographies in 40 anys de Blues a Barcelona, a task he accepted as a natural thing: few know the nuances of the Barcelona blues as well as he does, both from inside the stages and from the culture that surrounds it.
A guitarist, vocalist and bassist, he is one of the veterans of the city’s blues scene. He was among the first to play at La Cova del Drac in the mid-eighties, and since then he has been through some twenty projects, among them Brighton 64 — the group he founded with his brother Albert and whose first album was entitled Barcelona Blues —, Blues Explosion, Maximum Ricky & Blues and Ricky Gil & Biscuit.
His dual status as a musician and a demanding reader made him the ideal person to revise the texts: he knows the protagonists, the venues and the stories at first hand, and he knows when a word sounds right and when it does not.
Lluís Souto
Proofreading
Lluís Souto (Terrassa, 1970) is a harmonica player and one of the essential names on the Barcelona blues scene. A profound connoisseur of the genre, he has devoted decades to studying its history and evolution, and he is the author of classes and lectures on the blues harmonica. For 40 anys de Blues a Barcelona he has served as proofreader, a task that follows naturally from his career as a musician and populariser of Barcelona blues.