Fito Páez celebrates 30 years of the album ‘El amor después del amor’ at a concert in Porto Alegre

Even with the light open, the cars stopped for the crowd and their umbrellas to cross Osvaldo Aranha towards Araújo Vianna. Inside, around 4,200 people were waiting for the Argentine Fito Paezchanting, in a beautiful and traditional chorus, “olê, olê, olê, olê! Fito, Fito!” Love after love, released 3 decades ago. Fito Páez has been on tour since last year to celebrate what is the best-selling album in the history of Argentine rock.

In the show, the keyboardist and songwriter plays all the songs in full, starting with the title track, announcing, and amplified by more than 4,000 people, that “love, after love, maybe looks like that ray of sunshine”. A ray of sunshine that still shines today, shedding light on platinum and South American music. And that light extends to the figure of Fito, who made the album in a moment of renewal — it marked the overcoming of old ghosts — and euphoria with a new love in his life.

Fito, accompanied by his band and a trio of woodwinds, sets the stage on fire and moves the audience, formed by those who have already beaten the record in age and by those who are still far from reaching it. When the artist reaches the fifth song, salt petalmake a declaration of love to your partner and friend Luis Alberto Spinetta, who lends her voice to the song: “Nowadays, much is said about Artificial Intelligence, that it is capable of doing many things. But Artificial Intelligence will never be able to do something as beautiful as what Spinetta did”, he said.

Coming halfway through the disc, the seventh song, A dress and a love, composed for actress Cecilia Roth — his new love at the time — dispensed with the band and was played only with the keyboard and voice of Fito Páez, not counting, of course, the audience choir, which at one point was led by the singer, with masterful movements. Worthy of praise at the end — “Como cantan, Porto Alegre!” —, the audience, during the song, could see an Argentine flag projected on the screens on the stage, which was accompanied by applause and ovations.

“Bienvenidos a La Rueda Mágica”, announces the singer as he begins to play the ninth song on the album, an ode to rock composed together with the iconic Charly García, a friend and music partner. Before starting the melancholy Detrás del Muro de los Lamentos, which features the voice of the incomparable Mercedes Sosa, the musician says that the inspiration for the song was Peruvian rhythms.

Closing the album, the last song, A rodar mi vida, brings the feeling that marked Fito Páez’s career in 1992: entering the perennial life of an artist with more than 1 million copies sold. “Cuando me di cuenta estaba vivo / Vivo para siempre de verdad”.

After a 10-minute break, Fito returns to the stage in a new outfit to sing some of his biggest hits. Begins with blood nature, 11 and 6, beat circus It is City of poor hearts. The surprise of the night was hearing the Argentine singing My good, my evil, by Caetano Veloso, with impeccable Portuguese. In the encore, the artist returns to the stage with the acclaimed give and give It is technicolor moth. After 2h20min of presentation, the artist closes the show with And give joy to my heart, which at one point dispensed with instruments and even Fito’s voice, joining 4,000 throats in a single chorus: “las shadows that here were in the state of being”. On the way out, the rain had stopped.