Photos: Sergio Betancort
The Cabildo of Lanzarote paid tribute to the salt master Víctor Fernández Gopar with the concert 'Versos de Sal' that took place on Saturday night at the theater that bears his name and that featured in the first part the performance of the folklorist Antonio Corujo, one of the great exponents of the legacy of a man without illustrious letters in his head, without a golden pen in his hand, but very rich in ideas, with hundreds and hundreds of his own verses in which he portrays himself
There is no one to this day with as much authenticity as Antonio Corujo, who has made known with such naturalness when reciting or singing the verses that the well-known Maestro de Salinas, Victor Fernández Gopar, left handwritten in his day, a man ahead of his time, born in Las Breñas in 1844 and died in 1920, but his verses are still valid today.
In 1990, Antonio Corujo recorded a vinyl album entitled "Un hombre, una isla, Un Mundo", which includes some of the verses written by its author with an attached booklet. This jewel was subsidized by the Yaiza City Council when Honorio García Bravo was mayor.
During his performance on Saturday, Antonio Corujo drew applause from the public who, very enthusiastic, supported him throughout his performance, partly recited and also sung, accompanied by the timple. Among the verses he performed, given that the general and regional elections are very close, he dropped two warning voters and saying: "Voters should first think about who they are putting the entire town in the hands of" and "If I put my sharecropper as mayor, what I want is done in the mayor's office".
Performance by Los Sabandeños and Los Campesinos
The second part of the concert was in charge of the popular music group Los Sabandeños, under the musical direction of Benito Cabrera and Elfidio Alonso, founder of the group and in charge of presenting each of the songs with the mastery that characterizes him, a man with an impressive musical wisdom who describes in great detail the content of each of the stories created, considered by many critics as an inexhaustible encyclopedia.
Los Sabandeños began their performance with a chain of popular choruses to which the public joined from the first moment, accompanying with palms and humming them. Los Sabandeños, who also recorded an album in 1977 entitled 'Las seguidillas del Salinero', performed some of those already recorded and, for the first time live, performed Zaranda, Folias and Malagueña, with the presence of the members of the dance corps of the Agrupación Folclórica Los Campesinos, who filled the stage with a symbiosis of color and plasticity with their slow but sure movements, turning them into a unique spectacle that only they with their good work and mastery can achieve.
In a second part, Los Sabandeños performed some of the songs they have recorded on their albums, dedicating some of them to the Latin American continent, putting the finishing touch with the famous pasodoble 'Islas Canarias'.
