Agustí Burriel

He is one of the finest voices in music of African-American origin in the country, and his first musical love was doo-wop, which when he was little more than a child led him to rock’n’roll, and from there to swing, rhythm & blues and blues, a genre that in his view forms the foundations of the building that is twentieth-century music. At the end of the nineties he became a regular at La Boîte, where he met musicians such as Ray Gelato, Steve Lucky, Mike Sanchez and a local group called The Big Jamboree. Years later, in 2007, he became the band’s vocalist, almost at the same time as he created his own outfit, Velvet Candles. Of an affable nature, he insists that the best thing about the blues is connecting with other musicians on the spur of the moment. “To walk onto a stage and connect with the audience through music that is, at bottom, out of place and out of time has always seemed to me a small miracle.” In recent years he has been a regular collaborator with the city’s flagship bands, such as Barcelona Big Blues Band or Los Mambo Jambo. A lover and a fine connoisseur of all African-American music, he confesses himself seduced by the blues, “a music that can only be sung with soul, because if there is no soul there is no blues”.