Joan Pau Cumellas

This virtuoso harmonica player, versatile and with a deep knowledge of the genre, belongs to the generation that came to the blues in the early nineties and took the pioneers as their first point of reference, embodied in his case by the Harmònica Coixa Blues Band, the group of the Mallorcan Víctor Uris, which inspired him to learn to play the harmonica. After collaborating with other contemporaries such as Lluís Coloma and Miguel Talavera, at the age of twenty-eight he made the definitive leap into professionalism in the hands of Big Mama Montse, becoming one of the country’s leading blues harmonica players. He has collaborated with historic figures such as Quico Pi de la Serra, Lotti Lewis, Amadeu Casas or Mingo Balaguer, and his harmonica has transcended the genre, accompanying artists such as Kiko Veneno or Maria del Mar Bonet, among others. His love for the genre, in which expressiveness and honesty seduce him, also carries over into the educational side with the children’s show El Blues a les Escoles, with Big Mama, where he discovers the best thing the blues has given him: “An extraordinary way of making all kinds of audiences vibrate and connect.”