Take six fun-loving Spanish guys in a homegrown band in Barcelona, add some lyrics in Chinese to their repertoire, and voila, you’ve got GAS.
The band members — Salvador Mas on guitar, Guillem Oms on guitar, Jordi Riba as the main vocalist, Marcel Batalle on drums, Oriol Serrano on keyboard and Pepe Zamora on bass — hatched the dream of singing in Chinese a few years ago, and they hope to get some gigs in Taiwan and China.
When asked how the concept began, Mas said that a friend came to one of their rehearsal sessions and asked Riba to translate one of their new Spanish songs into Chinese.
Photo courtesy of Salvador Mas
Riba, who is the bands only fluent Chinese speaker, had the idea one day during a practice session to try to translate some of the band’s original Spanish-language lyrics into Chinese and see if they could sing some songs in a foreign language as a kind of musical experiment.
“We were amazed at the results of the translation, and we liked the way Chinese words sound when sung, with their tone and melodious qualities, so we decided to go for it and try to make this project work,” Mas said.
lyrics and melodies
To create songs with Chinese lyrics, Riba transposes the Spanish lyrics into Chinese pinyin — not word for word, but to catch the gist or feeling of the words. Mas then composes the melodies.
When asked what the band’s name means, Mas didn’t miss a beat.
“Well, we took the name from the lyrics of a Rolling Stones song, Jumping Jack Flash, you know — ‘It’s a gas! gas! gas!’ We all thought it was funny.”
The bandmates are not about to quit their day jobs anytime soon, but they plan to keep plugging their dream of performing in Chinese in Chinese-speaking countries like Taiwan or China.
To make ends meet, the six men in their 30s work at a variety of jobs. Riba teaches English and Chinese to kids here, Zamora is a sociologist, Oms is a street musician, Serrano works as a sound engineer, Batalle teaches percussion at a music school and has a side gig repairing drums and Mas is an economist.
So far they’ve only played one gig with the Chinese lyrics at a concert in Spain during an overseas Chinese festival in Barcelona. That was in 2013.
“There were Taiwanese in the audience then, and there were also people from Hong Kong and China,” Mas said.
“The reaction was positive, so we want to keep our dream alive.”
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