Soundtracks of a nation

Ger­ard Quin­tana says that in some con­certs the au­di­ence call for Vent­delplà. It is not the name of any Sopa de Cabra song but rather the title song of De­sco­breix-te, the TV se­ries for which Quin­tana pro­vided the vo­cals. TV3 opted for do­mes­tic mu­si­cians, such as Gos­sos and San­jo­sex, who pro­vided ver­sions of Quin­tana's song in the fol­low­ing sea­sons of the se­ries. The anec­dote shows the pop­u­lar­ity of home­made songs in Cata­lan-pro­duced TV se­ries.

Polseres ver­melles was a se­ries that also proved sig­nif­i­cant for Teràpia de Shock and their song Sense tu. Al­bert Planade­vall from Ràdio Flaixbac re­mem­bers how the song be­came an an­them for the se­ries and com­pares it to an­other ex­am­ple of how songs can frame the iden­tity of a pop­u­lar pro­gramme: “In one episode they used a piece by Lluís Gavaldà and Josep Thió, Si­len­cis, while the pro­tag­o­nist danced; the very next day they asked us for it on the radio.”

This song was also used in the fifth episode of Merlí. While Merlí ap­peals to ado­les­cent view­ers, it is also pop­u­lar with their par­ents' gen­er­a­tion, which is re­flected in its use of clas­si­cal music along­side tracks from groups such as La Casa Azul and Vi­o­ladores del Verso. Mu­si­cian Xavi Capel­las is in charge of the se­ries' music, after al­ready work­ing on such pro­jects as El cafè de la Ma­rina (2014) and Tornarem (2012). Cur­rently work­ing on Manuel Huerga's new thriller for TV3, Nit i dia, Capel­las says he is not so in­flu­enced by Amer­i­can se­ries, al­though he does find the work of Cliff Martínez on The Knick in­ter­est­ing, as rem­i­nis­cent of “the era of the film Traf­fic”, as well as such clas­sic sound­tracks as Break­ing Bad and The So­pra­nos. As for the new se­ries, he says in re­la­tion to the US: “I like what is being done but I pre­fer to find some­thing more orig­i­nal.”

Mean­while, a dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of Joel Joan's shows is the care­fully cho­sen music to add per­son­al­ity to his pro­jects. Porca misèria was the first Cata­lan se­ries to in­cor­po­rate music in the vein of the mod­ern clas­sics of Amer­i­can TV fic­tion. As a viewer, Joan says he ap­pre­ci­ated those scenes that seemed like a “self-con­tained video­clip” re­in­forc­ing the feel­ings of the char­ac­ters in ques­tion. Al­bert Pla, Adrià Puntí, Sau and El Último de la Fila are some of the mu­si­cians whose work also ap­pears in his shows.

The di­rec­tor of Ca­chi­tos de hi­erro y cromo, Jero Rodríguez, points to the se­ries by Marc Cre­huet, Pop ràpid, as an ex­am­ple of rau­cous com­edy that mir­rors a whole gen­er­a­tion in the vein of the British se­ries, The Young Ones, with a music se­lec­tion that goes be­yond sim­ply “putting on a song be­cause it sounds good”.