How was Mateu Matas 'Xurí', according to his older brother: “All day he went around with cuts and scrapes on his face and body”

PalmaIn Santa Margalida there is a street called Sa Placeta because it is a three-cornered area that forms a small square. In the eighties, quite a few kids lived among the houses in that neighborhood, about seventeen or eighteen. They were not the same age, but there was only a five-year age gap between them. Time passed, everyone went their own way, but every summer they close the street and have a dinner to meet up again. Including partners and children, about 60 people get together. One of the guests is the glosador Mateu Matas OrdinasXurí (Santa Margalida, 1982). His older brother, Joan, who is five years his senior, tells us about it.

The first thing he says is that the childhood they lived has nothing to do with the one children have now. “We went on bike trips to the football field, played with little carts made of ball-bearing boxes, slid down the hood of a car, wandered through vacant lots, shook almond trees, something that has already passed into history… We caused more disasters than they do now. There were no video games. We had a great time”, he points out. “Even though Mateu was smaller, he always wanted to go with the older ones. I suppose that just happens with siblings”. Little Mateu walked around happily with the older boys, his brother's friends, through the town. And although he managed well enough, his brother says that “he was a bit wild” and that “all day long he went around with cuts and scratches on his face and body”.

“He, once a month, had to give us a scare. He has a mark on his face that he got when he was young from a bike crash. He was going down a hill and a car opened the door and hit him squarely in the face. That was our bread and butter every weekend!”, says Joan, who remembers another, big crash: “Our grandfather had made us a swing with a basket. We were playing on it and, when I pushed him, I made it tip over and he hit his head on one of those clay troughs we used to feed the pigs. He made a hole in the middle of his forehead. I don’t know if his rhyming comes from having hit his head so many times”, says his brother, half-laughing, as if it were nothing.

In reality, however, Joan thinks that the rhyming comes from his father and his paternal grandmother. “Mateu really liked listening to the rhymes they sang at the Sant Antoni bonfires. He was about 10 years old. My father and his friends would make a circle and sing typical songs; they didn’t improvise. But he would remain spellbound”. Furthermore, Mateu had a very strong bond with his paternal grandmother, Francisca, who also knew many songs. He always listened to her with admiration: “If something happened, my grandmother had a song to tell about it”, he remembers. He started improvising after his adolescence, and it began to be part of his day-to-day life: “He says that improvising is training. I say it is a gift, but he maintains that anyone can do it. I have my doubts”.

Mateu, according to his brother, “was a cheerful and likeable boy, who was charming. He was very affectionate… and mischievous”. And at school, he wasn’t one of the most hardworking: “At our house, we have always said the same thing: ‘He is lazy as can be’. But, since he is intelligent, he got through the courses with great dignity”. And when the time came to go out at night, he suddenly got a taste for it.

Joan also remembers the trips they took by car with their father –who is now seventy-five– listening to the cassettes of Manolo Escobar, El Fary, and Antonio Molina. And even though they weren’t children who spent time watching television, sometimes they watched David the Gnome. The reason is simple: “In the summer, they wouldn’t let us go out into the street until five o’clock in the afternoon. From two until five, it was forbidden to leave the house, because everyone was taking a nap”.