The mothers of the rumba

In his memoir , The Soul of a People , Peret tells his non-Roman niece, Cèlia Sànchez-Mústich, that as a young man, he packed a suitcase and went to South America to sell suits door-to-door, hoping to make a fortune ("I was a schemer, and that's a great honor, but I didn't steal") and, upon his return, be able to set up a dried fruit stand. But by then, he'd already been bitten by the palm virus at El Salchichón, the bar in the Raval district where he sang and played guitar with his gypsy friends. He had made his debut at the age of twelve with his cousin, Aunt Pepi – they called themselves the Montenegro Brothers – performing for Eva Perón at the Tívoli Theatre, and in time he would be crowned the king of Catalan rumba, “the last great style of popular music with roots that old Europe would produce,” in the words of Mingus B. Formentor, the erudite and enjoyable critic who will have burned the most shoe soles in the exercise of his profession in concert halls around the world.

Cheerful and vibrant, Catalan rumba is the fruit of a festive fusion of flamenco, Caribbean (Cuban) rhythms, street poetry, and rock (Elvis Presley). Peret brought it his signature way of strumming the guitar, using the instrument (the fan) as percussion, accelerating the tempo, and precise handclapping. He was the one who took it the furthest, with early hits like "La noche del hawaiano" (The Hawaiian Night ), which in the 1960s began to be played at Bacarrá, the trendy nightclub in the upper part of Barcelona, ​​or planetary hits like "Borriquito ," composed while driving down Urgell Street rhythmically pressing the brakes of a large American car ("Borriquito like you, tururú, you don't even know your u, tururú...").

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But the paternity of the genre has always been in dispute with another older rumbero, in this case from Gràcia, Pescaílla, either solo or accompanied by his father Antonio and his brother l'onclu Polla . In the Ecomuseu Urbà Gitano de Barcelona (Emugba), one of the smallest and most beautiful museums to visit in Barcelona, ​​a capgròs of the king of rumba is collected when there's no party. He has Peret's sideburns and the nose of Lola Flores's former partner.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Roma women sailed alone to the Americas and returned with Latin music records.

“The paternity of Catalan rumba is shared; a genre is never born from a single person, but from a community,” concludes activist Sam García, Sam Mosketón in art, director of that kilometer 0 of Catalan rumba located at number 10 Calle de la Cera, whose walls, lined with objects and personal stories of all colors, hang photographs of the Roma women who, in the 1950s and 1960s, before Peret, left their children and husbands and traveled alone to Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, to sell tablecloths, sheets, or cuts of dresses. Brave Roma women and brunettes who returned with enough money to support the entire family in winter, suitcases loaded with Latin music records, and dances clinging to their hips that accelerated the start of the ventilator.