This 2022 marks 30 years in the music world. how do you celebrate
I’m not a big fan of ephemeris or anniversaries. I hadn’t noticed the 30-year mark until someone reminded me that that time had passed since the release of my first album. [La luz que sabe robar]. In fact, when I started this profession, writing songs and playing live, I always felt 89 years old. But yes, it is very impressive because many years have passed. Especially to celebrate him, I do nothing but accept, accept and be happy with him. I prefer the present to the past. The best way to celebrate a past is to leave it in place. Writing new songs is my favorite thing. If you look, I’ve never made a top hit album. The only time in my life I’ve re-recorded material, B sidea duo album of rare songs, an experimental album.
Walk or explode or in your case walk and reinvent. What does experimentation, which is a constant in all your sound work, mean to you?
I really like the image of walking and rediscovering (laughs). Experiment is synonymous with the life process. Life is a dynamic balance, not always static, constantly in motion and facing new situations. Experimenting is testing those around you and acting on what you find. To try is to avoid autopilot, the archenemy of life and any creative activity.
I’d be shocked if I didn’t ask what he’s prepared for Mallorca.
Very tough, I put together a great group of three men and three women. For the first time in my life, I am leading a group with the same number of men and women. It is as if the small circle of the stage reflects the larger circle of the audience demographically. It makes me very happy. This is also an experiment, a new perspective on music, tours, collaborations… I have a great keyboard player from Barcelona, Meritxell Neddermann; Alana Sinkëy from Guinea-Bissau on vocals and percussion; Myriam Latrece from Madrid, also on vocals and percussion; Javier Calequi of Buenos Aires on guitar and vocals; Carles ‘Campi’ Campón, also from Barcelona, on electric bass and programming; and the great Borja Barrueta from Bilbao, who has been drumming with me for 17 years. They all have a very successful solo project of their own, so it’s a privilege for me to leave the project to tour with me.
Do the public need to come prepared to the dance?
There is a final part of the concert where the public has always stood up until now. I recommend bringing your dance shoes. Dancing is a basic, very important human activity that involves more areas of the brain. Many of us grew up in societies where dance was not commonplace and spontaneous. You go to Venezuela, Colombia or Africa and you see everyone dancing from an early age: in the kitchen, chatting or celebrating, on birthdays. great, more important. No. Reading is very important, but so is dancing. Dance moves the whole brain: coordination brain, affective, rational, motor… It is an activity that connects you to your body and also to others. I defend him because I am the son of the Uruguayan dictatorship. I grew up in an environment where there was no dance, and as I got older I realized this lack, I realized that blockage in the body, I realized that I had to work consciously to break free from the dictatorship of recent pressures. It occupied my joints.
His concert will take place at the old Calvià Aquapark, where he won his victory a few weeks ago. C. TanganaBefore more than 25,000 people. What do you admire about the man from Madrid with whom he had several collaborations? Touching you?
I really like the way he writes, the artistic vision he has in general, the way he wraps his songs with an aesthetic vision that’s very clear, from his costumes to his video clips and staging. My son Pablo goes on keyboard tour with him. C. Tangana is the hallmark of rap, the rhythmic flow of texts, and often produces very interesting melodies. Writing with him has been a very important experience from which I learned a lot.
Unlike many people who are not interested in urban music, you are an advocate of trap and reggaeton.
I would advise those who don’t like urban music to go to a place where people have fun with their ears open one day and remember how they danced at that age. You have to let the music enter your body. Each generation has its own way of expressing their sexuality and turning it into dance. I love the rhythmic pattern of the first reggaeton, especially Tego Galderón, and also Bad Bunny’s latest album, a. Fantastic. This rhythmic pattern is very old, it crosses all of North Africa, it’s been with us for a long time, it’s really powerful, and the middle beat breaks your hips and produces that sensuality.
Have you ever felt idolized?
Yes, there are people who have this attitude towards someone. I’ll try to eliminate it if I can, and I’ve actually accomplished a lot. I do not ask for idolatry for myself, nor do I answer it. I don’t have a fan club, I don’t like the concept of fans. There is already enough fanaticism in the world to generate more fanaticism. Idolatry is a kind of fanaticism, simplification of a person, you can only idolize someone you do not know. As Caetano Veloso said: “Soon nobody is normal.” Or as my teacher Antonio Escohotado said: “The closer you get to a person, the more complex it is, it’s not that simple.” With idolatry, the person is simplified.
Who was your last hero?
Antonio Escohotado’s photo. I visited him in Ibiza shortly before he died. In addition to my friend, he was my hero for his outlook on life and his deeply rooted idea of freedom. I’ve never known a brain like yours, and I don’t think I ever will. With him died a deep and thoughtful way of understanding the world. All his life, Antonio devoted to working twelve hours a day, from Monday to Sunday. His memory was extraordinary, he absorbed everything he read.
Why did you choose the terms? ink and time to name your last job?
There are actually three. The third is on the album cover and on the concert stage and the blank page. ink and time a song about the act of songwriting. “What I left in writing was not carved into granite,” I sing. It’s the same thing we talked about idolatry: Don’t be idolatrous to yourself. What you write are premonitions you let loose in the wind. I’m not saying this as an exercise in false humility. I love writing songs, I’ve been doing it for a long time and I think I’m good at it, but I can’t write it if I think about the weight of a 30-year career and 14 albums. Let the ink and time do their thing. Pour ink on blank paper, write, write, what needs to be written will be written. It is necessary to assume that someone does not command in the composition. I don’t know where a song came from. I’m not in control and it’s not up to me. Leonard Cohen said, “A huge load has been lifted from my soul because I realized that love is not in my control.” The illusion of control enslaves. We are chaotic beings and we must learn to navigate this chaos.