The musical group Acatife celebrates its fortieth anniversary this Christmas. To mark the anniversary of this historic musical group, which was founded in 1983 in Lanzarote, La Voz has spoken with its spokesman and former president, Alfredo Cabrera.
"Let's say that, on many occasions, Acatife has acted as the chronicler of the island," he begins. Among the themes that surround the songs of this folk group, for four decades they have been singing "to the island, to the man of Lanzarote, to our territory, to the sea, to the volcano, to its people or to their way of being."
This cultural association was born "from a handful of young people" who prepared a performance for the Midnight Mass at Christmas. It was the 80s and the island of then was very different from the current one. Now, forty years after its beginning, lovers of traditional Canarian music continue to spread their tradition throughout the Archipelago.
"The group from then has changed a lot," Cabrera said. This musical association currently has 34 members with ages ranging from 15 to 64 years old. This space is not only a place to spread the oral culture of the island, but also a group for intergenerational encounters.
Alfredo Cabrera does not hesitate to assure that his groupmates are part of a large family. This space, born in the Villa de Teguise, seeks to create a positive tone among its members and avoid "bad issues among its members."
"The new generations are absorbing everything that the elders of the groups, those who have been around for more years, have sown and from them, well, that idea is being absorbed," said Alfredo Cabrera.
Sometimes, the young people who join the group arrive with an idea of the type of music that should be made. "We must continue on the path of the songs and the repertoire, there are some guidelines, it has always had a line and it is the one that continues to have," says the spokesman for Acatife.
For Alfredo Cabrera, young people act like sponges. "We have always had youth, young boys, who are like knives in butter, in terms of traditional folklore," he explains. Thursdays are the traditional rehearsal days. However, depending on the moment, they can vary up to two, three or four times a week.
From the first day of 2023, this corporation used the entrance to the new year to celebrate its anniversary in style. As part of these activities, they will also celebrate the Echos de Mujer meeting, in order to celebrate with the public. In this project, they have recorded traditional tracks of the group sung by women. It should be noted at this point that Acatife has been a men-only group since its creation.
"We are going to do something unprecedented. We have put our songs in a selection of the albums and we have re-recorded with women's voices, which, of course, are women from the island who have also joined the project temporarily," he explains.
The women who will participate in this new Acatife album are artists with "an extensive career on the island, some of them, singers who have gone through traditional music groups, and others perhaps not so much, but ultimately they are voices of Lanzarote."
Thus, Acatife is committed to traditional music, although "most of the repertoire does not conform to root themes, if it is true that the root of traditional music is in almost all the themes, in the music or the rhythms." This tradition is reflected in their lyrics that serve as a camera to remember the history of the island.
"Every time we go on stage, whether it's a Champions League stage or a Third Division stage, whether there is a lot of public or a small audience, whether it's in a large or small town, we put all our effort into transmitting from the stage what Lanzarote is, what it's like, the chronicles of events, the ways of life of the men and women of Lanzarote.
"Everything revolves around what Lanzarote is and its rural historical tradition," concludes Cabrera.
