Chento Briganti

This drummer, with his sharp and unfailing sense of humour, grew up during the hard 1950s in the heart of Barcelona, a few metres from the Cathedral, and in the early seventies became one of the pioneers of the city’s blues, even though his first encounter with the genre was not exactly love at first sight: “The first record I ever bought was a John Lee Hooker one and I didn’t like it at all. I wanted to swap it quickly for one of the Beatles, but then I got the hang of it and ended up swapping it back again. The bands of the time, like the Beatles or the Rolling, played rhythm & blues, and once you connect with the origins, you get hooked.” But his reason for coming to music was a little more down to earth: “When I was fourteen I realised that at dances only the musicians got lucky, so I decided to learn to play.” Seduced by the blues, he joined the first blues projects of the seventies and eighties, in the orbit of Vicente Zúmel, whom he credits as the driving force behind the blues in Barcelona in vibrant years full of vitality and rhythm, when every festival programmed blues. A genre to which he has devoted his whole life, something he appraises by displaying his acid humour: “What is the best thing the blues has given me? A non-contributory pension.”