ECONOMIC IMPACT STUDY
PEP GIMENO "BOTIFARRA"
Josep Gimeno i Montell, known artistically as Pep Gimeno “Botifarra”, is a Valencian traditional singer recognized for his work since 1976 in the recovery, promotion, adaptation, and dissemination of Valencian musical culture. It was not until 2006 that he recorded his first solo album, Si em pose a cantar cançons, awarded the ‘Premi Ovidi’ in 2007 and which marked his breakthrough to a wider audience. Since that album, he has released ten records, the latest being Ja ve l’aire (2023).
A cantaor from Xàtiva, a carrier of sayings and a blacksmith, he has given us the gift of recovering the Valencian oral tradition which, faded and barely a generation and a half away from disappearing, needed to be gathered and never lost sight of again. He is the artist who has returned to us what we did not know was ours, in an act of love for language and land. Since he was a teenager, he has travelled through villages, squares and homes to record the remnants of a wit forcibly dissolved by time, and since the 1980s he has shared its reconstruction. With ancestral sarcasm and a voice so deep it seems to rise from the origins, he sings, recites and teaches popular wisdom. His collection of songs, sayings and tales is not only a journey through the history of the País Valencià; it is also a living reconstruction from the root. ‘BOTIFARRA’ embodies a resistant collective memory, and his voice is that of an entire people.
Clara Altaba
Community manager of La Sotana