A full house and Corujo's coplas in the air again: how 'Recuerdos del jable' went

A year after the death of Antonio Corujo, the barber who spent his life singing the coplas of the poet Víctor Fernández Gopar, the theatre that carries that poet's name filled up for him. On Thursday 1 October, at the Teatro Víctor Fernández Gopar 'El Salinero' in Arrecife, Recuerdos del jable premiered.

Who built it

The tribute came from inside the family, not from a culture department: it was led by Corujo's descendants and students.

• the original idea is Óscar Pérez Cabrera's
• the staging and script are by José María de Paiz
• the direction is by the maestro Toñín Corujo

How it went

The hall filled completely. On stage, local voices and traditional Canarian tocadores, and Antonio Corujo's coplas sounded again inside that theatre: their cadence — that slow, spoken measure that resembles the singing of nowhere else — filled the room, and the audience applauded, moved, all evening.

This is how an island keeps alive what it knows: not in an archive, but by making it sound in a room full of people who recognise it.