Pau Riba -

Pau Riba (Aug. 7, 1948) is a Spanish singer/songwriter who was active as a recording artist for more than four decades, starting in the late 1960s. Between 1970 and 1986, he released seven studio albums on Concèntric, Edigsa, and Movieplay.

Background

Pau Riba i Romeva was born on Aug. 7, 1948, in Palma, Mallorca, Spain. Riba was the son of textile engineer Jordi Riba and Mercè Romeva, who returned with the family to Barcelona in July 1950. Poets Carles Riba and Clementina Arderiu were the paternal grandparents; politician Pau Romeva, a founder of Unió Democràtica de Catalunya, was the maternal grandfather.

Riba completed secondary studies at Escola Isabel de Villena. He initially planned a career in painting and began playing a guitar borrowed from an older brother as a teenager. In late summer 1964, Riba composed his first songs and wrote his first poems and short stories. He formed Els Troba-2 that year with second cousin and classmate Jordi Casassas. Riba received an accèssit at the 1966 Vida Nova competition in Cantonigròs for the short-story collection Carta a la vida. He entered Escola Massana for the 1966–67 term to study drawing, painting and graphic design and took early design jobs in Barcelona.

In 1967, Riba won prose and poetry prizes at the Centre Parroquial Sant Josep de Badalona. At the inaugural Festival de la Cançó Universitària that year, he won first prize with “Taxista.” Riba also auditioned for Els Setze Jutges, but the collective rejected his application. The circle around the university folk scene developed into Grup de Folk, which Riba co-founded with musicians active in Barcelona. Concèntric issued the three-song Taxista EP in 1967 with “El matí de Sant Esteve” and “Aquest carrer m’és prohibit” and presented the record at La Cova del Drac in Barcelona that October.

Discography: