With Ġensna set for another run, Alex Vella Gregory talks to its composer Paul Abela and finds there is more to him than the rock opera.

Paul Abela is a very quiet, soft-spoken man who speaks of his music in almost apologetic terms. This does not mean he is not proud of his achievements, but rather he comes across as a man who does what he does because he loves doing it, and not for fame and glory. And let’s face it, very often it is a thankless job.

Abela’s name is synonymous with the popular music scene in Malta, and he has written many hits for leading pop singers in Malta. He is also very active in musicals and has authored several, including Ġensna. The very name of that musical spells controversy, but before we talked about Ġensna, I tried to get to know him more. I do feel that Ġensna has overshadowed the hard work he has done since then. It was written in 1982, after all.

Abela had just returned from the US, where he studied composition at Berklee College of Music in Boston. His partner in crime, and inspiration, was none other than Charles City Gatt. Despite being classically trained, his heart was always set on jazz and musical theatre. But why did he come back?

“Well, it’s funny,” says Abela, “when I was here I wanted to leave, and when I was there I got homesick!’ In the end, the call of Malta was too strong.”

His greatest influences tend to be great melody writers, particularly Alan Menken and Keith Jarrett. Abela is also a great melodist in his own right and, apart from the usual suspects from Ġensna, he has also authored such evergreens like L-Aħħar Bidwi f’Wied il-Għasel and Il-Bajja tal-Mellieħa. At this point you might get purists and musical elitists rallying against this “unashamedly populist commercial kitsch”.

Well, if you heard Ira Losco singing L-Aħħar Bidwi at this year’s Mata Eurovision Song Contest, you might detect in it something which transcends the period it was written in. If it were such a bad song, I hardly think Claudio Baglioni would have bothered with it. And I still think Mary Spiteri’s Little Child is one of the best things we have ever sent on the Eurovision stage, which, for better or worse, is an important international stage for Malta.

This is perhaps what a lot of people (and critics) do not realise. Abela is certainly not some sort of dilettante tinkling the ivories and spinning cheap tunes. If you can listen to Ġensna from a musical point of view, and not from a political point of view, then you will find much in it that is valid and good. “Ġensna was commissioned by the Malta Labour Party, and it is really the last few numbers that have proved controversial, mostly because they deal with historical events which are still within living memory.”

Ġensna will always be a hard nut to crack for those who happened to be on the wrong side of the fence when it was written, but the very fact that it touches a raw nerve is perhaps an indication of its worth

There is no doubt about the political background of Ġensna. It is a piece of socialist realism, but then again should we take Shostakovich and Prokofiev to task for writing some blatantly socialist works? Or closer to musical theatre, should we condemn Andrew Lloyd Webber for turning Jesus into a hippy? “Interpretation is the key to everything,” affirms Abela in a quiet tone. “It is up to you to interpret a work of art, that is how it’s always been, and that is how it should be.”

Ġensna is very much a product of its time, but there are moments of universal appeal, and it is also a rare case where the music and the text are in complete synthesis. Whether you like the message or not, it is a very well-written composition. It was also responsible for changing a lot of attitudes to music and music recording at the time. There are atonal dance sequences, electronic pitch manipulation, and multi-track recording techniques. In today’s high tech world it sounds naive, but back in the 1980s, this was pretty advanced for Malta.

But in many ways, Ġensna is the end of an era for Maltese culture, and only the beginning of Abela’s career. He could never have predicted its success, and he has certainly not remained stuck in that niche. Even the subsequent revivals were different, and the upcoming one this month will feature an enhanced rock band set up to match the stylistic qualities of the singers, who have been chosen from the local rock scene.

Ġensna will always be a hard nut to crack for those who happened to be on the wrong side of the fence when it was written, but the very fact that it touches a raw nerve is perhaps an indication of its worth. And the same can be said of Abela’s music. It might polarise some, but it never leaves you indifferent. All that Abela cares about is writing good music; the interpretation is up to us.

Ġensna is taking place on Saturday and next Sunday at the Malta Fairs and Conventions Centre, Ta’ Qali. Tickets are available from the Embassy, Valletta, and One Complex, Marsa, or online.

www.ticketline.com.mt

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