Oscar Rabadán

He is one of the most effective and brilliant, and at the same time most discreet, guitarists on the Barcelona blues scene. As a teenager he embraced the rock’n’roll of the fifties, without knowing that he was giving himself over to the devil’s music. Diving into its origins, he found a sound, a way of playing and singing that knocked him out: “It was amazing. I had never heard anything like it. I don’t know whether I chose it or it chose me, but I knew straight away that I wanted to try to do that. And I’m still trying.” Affable in manner, reserved on stage and brilliant in his musical execution, he began playing professionally in response to an advertisement seeking a guitarist, and there he met Blas Picón, whom he has accompanied musically ever since, although he has also collaborated with most of the leading figures of the Barcelona scene. His musical pillars range from Blind Lemon Jefferson to the Rolling Stones, and they include a wide array of guitarists from every genre descended from the blues, a music that caught him, in his own words, for its sound, its wild side and the freedom to improvise: “I like the old sound; things that are too produced and too pretty don’t do it for me.”