This Friday you are playing at a Festival that in its second edition has managed to have a luxury line-up. Is there a difference between performing at an event like this or at a concert where you know the audience is going to see Macaco?
I know that on Friday I'm playing with Calima, another of the great revelations in Spain, and I'm very excited to be with them, and US3 who are also a classic of music. But playing at a festival is not much different. This year I performed at Viña Rock, at peak time, in front of 90,000 people, and they say that Macaco was the one with the highest attendance and the people were very enthusiastic. The difference is that when it's your concert it can be more extensive. In my case, there are parts that I like to improvise and I lengthen them. You have more room to put the lights that you like the most. When you play with more people you have to adapt to all the bands, that would be the difference, but as far as the audience is concerned it is always wonderful and people go crazy, now more than ever because Macaco has grown a lot with this new album and they know the songs very well. It's a very nice thing.
And what's new in "Ingravitto" compared to your previous works?
It is above all an album where the songs shine more than ever. Where less is more. It is my motto that I have tattooed inside my heart, and it does not mean that you do more simplistic things, but to look for simplicity in the sense of not putting for the sake of putting. I think that music needs to breathe, it needs its silences and an arrangement is important but it can't eat the song. The essence of the song has to prevail over any arrangement and over any production. Many of the songs on the album that work very well have become anthems, which makes me very excited.
According to the presentation of your album, it "inaugurates the era of the wisdom of the Crazy Monkey". Do you agree, is there more maturity of knowledge in this album?
Someone put that when making the sheet. I don't really agree because I don't have any wisdom. I am a life apprentice and I am learning something every day. But musically one of the mottos that I have learned is that, not to put for the sake of putting. As for the message, I try to be simple and not to be a pamphleteer. To say the best I have of myself in that song. I am not a politician. For example "Mama Tierra" which defends respect for this mother earth that we have under our feet is because I really like nature, not because I pretend to be anything. I am a life apprentice.
But is there a certain ideology in your lyrics?
Well the ideology would be positivism. To live in the present, because many times when we cling to the past and do not project into the future we miss the steps we are taking and that is a little bit what I try to apply to myself. Sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don't. To be yourself, not to have any label. To try to be nothing, to be open, to have an open mind, feet on the ground to be and always have the "hand raised" to play with the world of imagination and the world of dreams which is what personally gives me life and I think it is free for everyone in life. I am first and foremost a musician and what comes out is what I am seeing in my life. I am not a politician, nor do I pretend to be a guru. I try to be honest with the things that are happening to me. I don't put the bad things in the songs, well sometimes a little bit, but in general I try to put the most positive part of me.
The mix of your music is the result of the very different origin of the members of your group
With Macaco I have traveled all over the world. I only have to play in the United States, which I am going to in October. But Macaco is not international because there are people from many places. Macaco is me, it's my project, and I'm the conductor of the orchestra, but I work with many musicians from other places and they are people who contribute things to the live performances of the songs I compose. The fact that Macaco is international is because in the end it is very local, it has a lot of influence from Catalan rumba, it talks about the things that happen to me here. I think it has a personality and I think that's what they see outside. The languages, for example, have been a consequence. I was on tour in Brazil and I said I'll do a song in their language as a nod.
Would you dare to define your style?
Well, Macaco's style is songs. As John Lennon said when he was asked what the next revolution in music would be: a good song. Labels are used to put things in a place so that people can find them later. I understand that journalists need that. They say mix, fusion. But they are labels, which I don't care about. If I had to put one, I would say that it is root and antenna music, like the previous album. I work with pop structures, but I don't make pop music. I make songs with their verse and their chorus, and the only thing that interests me is to reach the feelings of the people and that people remember those songs without making pastry music.
Do you consider yourself a globetrotter?
One hundred percent. But with time I am looking for my place, my little house, I look for a lot of land, my little garden, as I say. I really like to travel, sometimes it tires you too, but I travel a lot. Now I am living between Barcelona and Madrid, and although I like Madrid, I am very much from Barcelona because I really like the sea. For years, I have been living in the port area and I go almost always to Barceloneta and that pulls me a lot.
Someone who has traveled so much, what is your opinion of the phenomenon of immigration that affects, especially, the Canary Islands?
I think there is a lot of hypocrisy. I think that anyone from Europe or North America can go south. We Europeans can go to Africa and nobody is going to give us any problems, to buy to do what we want, and the other way around no. It is a great hypocrisy and as long as there is that imbalance there will be many problems in the world. I hope they will be solved, but I doubt it very much. To take a boat and risk your life, you have to have something really hard behind you, because if not nobody wants to leave, it's obvious, what we have to do is to fight so that those people don't have those problems and see what we can do. I tell them that we have also been emigrants. Our grandparents and great-grandparents. You have to put yourself in the other person's shoes.
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