Last Sunday I watched a documentary on TV about the life of Anna Mal Bullock or -what it is the same- Tina Turner, the name as the entire world knows such a brilliant singer.

Her story has highly impacted on me because she managed to succeed in music but after struggling for a long time to overcome many barriers and difficulties she encountered in her life.

Let me start from the beginning: She was born in Tennessee in 1939. She was from a quite deprived background. When she was an adolescent, her parents got divorced and her mother left their children with Tina’s father. So, from that moment she was living in a broken home. She married Ike Turner, a musician that after hearing one night Tina´s voice asked her to sing with his band. Many years later, Tina claimed that neither her mother nor her husband – from whom she had suffered from abuse and mistreatment- had ever loved her. 

Tina asked for a divorce. In Court, she did not want anything from her husband, even not the rights to the songs she had sung with him. The only thing she just wanted was to keep her artistic name because, in her own words, she had worked hard to deserve that name. The judge ruled in favour of Tina. From then, she started her solo career from scratch. Ike Turner thought that Tina would be, professionally speaking, as dead as a dodo without him.

At first, she released some albums without any repercussion. Only after her award-winning single “What is Love Got to Do with it” released in 1984 did she have the recognition of the general public. Then, she started filling stadiums, going to many TV programmes, acting in one film... She eventually achieved her goal: to be the first black singer woman to have such a great audience. Bravo Tina!

What I like most about Tina’s story is how she succeed despite having to deal with many obstacles, I mean, she kept on fighting to achieve her dreams. She has proved to be as hard as nails!

 

I. Toquero

 

 

Andrea Bocelli is an Italian singer who has gained worldwide fame for his powerful and emotive tenor voice. He was born on September 22, 1958, in Lajatico, Tuscany, Italy.

Bocelli was born with congenital glaucoma and lost his sight completely at the age of 12 after a soccer accident.  He had a sheltered upbringing in a close-knit family.

He showed a keen interest in music from a young age and began playing the piano and singing from scratch.  He studied law at the University of Pisa but continued to pursue his passion for music, performing in piano bars where he felt as a fish out of water.

Due to his blindness, his future was as clear as mud but he was as hard as nails struggling for becoming a singer.

In 1992, Bocelli's big break came when Italian pop star Zucchero Fornaciari heard him sing at a demo tape and invited him to perform a duet. The song, "Miserere," became a huge hit in Italy, and Bocelli's career took off. He was 34. 

Since then, Bocelli has become one of the world's most successful tenor. He has collaborated with other famous musicians, including Celine Dion, Ed Sheeran, Sarah Brightman and Luciano Pavarotti with whom he became a friend.

Bocelli has received numerous awards throughout his career, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a nomination for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards.  Andrea Bocelli is considered one of the greatest tenors of all time.

Celine Dion once said: 'If God was an artist, His voice should sound like Andrea Bocelli's''

Joaquim Amat

Andrea Bocelly – A remarkable life

Andrea Bocelli is an Italian singer who has gained worldwide fame for his powerful and emotive tenor voice. He was born on September 22, 1958, in Lajatico, Tuscany, Italy.

Bocelli was born with congenital glaucoma and lost his sight completely at the age of 12 after a soccer accident.  He had a sheltered upbringing in a close-knit family.

He showed a keen interest in music from a young age and began playing the piano and singing from scratch.  He studied law at the University of Pisa but continued to pursue his passion for music, performing in piano bars where he felt as a fish out of water.

Due to his blindness, his future was as clear as mud but he was as hard as nails struggling for becoming a singer.

In 1992, Bocelli's big break came when Italian pop star Zucchero Fornaciari heard him sing at a demo tape and invited him to perform a duet. The song, "Miserere," became a huge hit in Italy, and Bocelli's career took off. He was 34. 

Since then, Bocelli has become one of the world's most successful tenor. He has collaborated with other famous musicians, including Celine Dion, Ed Sheeran, Sarah Brightman and Luciano Pavarotti with whom he became a friend.

Bocelli has received numerous awards throughout his career, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a nomination for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards.  Andrea Bocelli is considered one of the greatest tenors of all time.

Celine Dion once said: 'If God was an artist, His voice should sound like Andrea Bocelli's''

Joaquim Amat

Released from scratch, she started her career singing in weddings and some bars, mostly without earning money. Surprisingly, the relation between music and Rosalia’s family was like chalk and cheese, nobody had ever had interest in music. What is more, during her childhood she had never listened to any pinch of flamenco. 

Bringed up in Sant Esteve Ses Rovires (in Barcelona), and born in 1992, she discovered at age of 7 she had a hidden connection with music. In fact, her family requested her to sing for them, ashamed, she accepted, and meanwhile she was singing, she had her eyes closed. When she opened them everyone was crying because of her velvet voice. From that day, she knew something important will bring to this world.

The second time she found a revelation was when she discovered flamenco music. “Something is broken inside of me when I hear flamenco, it is a special feeling that I cannot describe", she says. Therefore, for that reason, Rosalia dedicated most of her career and studies discovering cantaores, versos and rhymes, lyrics, history and stories of flamenco, until she finally threw those ancient knowledge in the modern panorama, mixing it with electronic and pointing up a new era for this music. Renewing this style considered as old as the hills. Nowadays it is alleged that she experiments so much with music that it is hard to identify her genre style.

I must confess that in a previous moment, the song she released I did not like. Indeed, I considered it such an awkward album. I am not a fan of flamenco or even Spanish songs or singers. However, one day someone told me to take a look at a musicologist video that, of course, I truly recommend: musical analysis in-depth  with Jaime Altozano.

He analyzed the music, sounds and lyrics Rosalia invented in their albums. The result is “WOWing” me! Who in the hell could dare play a WhatsApp voice note of her grandmother -in catalan- in a song, while is sounding of background a peal of longcase clock. Or singing an erotic ode mixed with submachine gun noise. Or even create one video clip that can only be seen with your phone and it is a one solo shot singing all the songs of her new album: Motomami. Talking about Albums, Rosalia connected their three albums (El Mal Querer, Los Ángeles and Motomami) like if they were a trilogy expressing the evolution of the main character: Rosalia, together with her thoughts about religion, painting art, films, feminism, poems and society in a very impressive and complex way.  

These and a lot of more reasons push me to think that Rosalia is becoming the Einstein of music.