There was a time, about a decade ago, when Devendra Banhart (Houston, Texas, 1981) was everywhere: at music festivals that adored her weird folk , in articles that explained how to get a hipster beard with the right texture and thickness and even in the magazines of the heart for its relationship with Natalie Portman . But regardless of whether Banhart enjoyed it or not (we think so) of that high of interplanetary fame, the truth is that the musician never stopped making records and now returns with a great one: Ma (Warner), an album full of memorable songs pop dedicated "to motherhood and art, which has been like another mother to me" .

The album began to take shape in Kyoto , in the typical crazy story full of mishaps that ends badly: a Japanese calligraphy teacher friend got some monks to give her an hour in a temple to play , but Banhart spent all the time assembling the set for the show and in the end he didn't have time to record anything. A disaster. But something remained: the Kyoto fiasco gave Banhart "the idea of ​​making an album in which there was no great distinction between outside and inside, between what is done by man and nature." The disc was finally recorded in northern California, "in a house near the ocean with the windows open." "In all the songs there is the vibration of the sea although it cannot be heard, for me it is another primary representation of motherhood," he explains.

The Japanese influence also floats in the thug video clip of the ultra-catchy Kantori Ongaku, where Banhart shows that he is willing to do almost everything (or at least to sing in a towel from a Japanese sauna or to ride in a lycra jersey with the colors of the Venezuelan flag) as long as we laugh and, incidentally , make a donation to the NGO Ilovevenezuela.org.

Banhart was born in Texas, but he spent his childhood and part of adolescence, until he was 14, in Venezuela. His mother raised him in an environment "very open to different ideas, religions, practices and concepts" where he heard everything: "salsa, merengue, rock, ragga, classical ... something he could not find in the streets, the radio or stores, "he explains. "I was very lucky to have a hippy mother. She raised me, I didn't have a father until I was eight years old."

Two and a half years ago the musician stepped on Venezuela for the last time and confesses that he lives "holding his breath". "When I went it seemed to me that the thing was much worse than what I read on social networks and in the New York Times, which was already apocalyptic in itself," he explains. He is very clear that "Maduro and Chávez are the same thing" , and he is very disappointed with the Venezuelan political soap opera.

"I was thinking about this this morning. There is no movement: Guaidó is still the person chosen by the world and Maduro still has the military, robbing and kidnapping the country . People keep trying to survive, without food ... my family continues there, they sell what they can, they live in a very frugal way, when I think about the situation at the geopolitical level, I see that nothing will change, because it has to do with Russia and China against the US and Europe, in the end it is a human question, of people who is hungry and needs food. I think it is with that part that is worth connecting to. That part is what Maduro, who lives in a bubble, does not want to see, "he reflects.

The tension in Latin America and the political tension that stains day-to-day life in Trump's America have illuminated a new wave of artists who proudly revive (and a most natural bilingualism) their roots. Artists such as Helado Negro , the project of the Puerto Rican Roberto Carlos Lange, his intimate, whose theme Young, Latin & Proud Banhart versions at the beginning of all his concerts (adoration is mutual, Helado Negro has just released a remix of Love Song , one of Ma's songs). "The same thing happens with Trump as with Maduro: nobody wants him there, but he stays," criticizes the musician. "They are people who do not care about democracy or the voice of the people, but power. It must be a very seductive drug."

"When people migrate normally they go to the big cities: Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. The rest of the country stays like a bubble and that is where the fear for ignorance, paranoia and propaganda can be born," says Banhart , who resides in Los Angeles, in "a kind of utopia, another America". The truth is that his last work, Ape in Pink Marble , was sung entirely in English, but in Ma there are three songs in Spanish ( Open your hands, My Boyfriend's in the Band and October 12 ) and even one in Portuguese, the delicious Carolina , "a song for a song" , Carolina de Chico Buarque: "It's so good that I wanted to dedicate another song to you: please save me from all the shit that sounds on the radio ."

Being an album dedicated to motherhood, it was clear that women were going to have a special role in Ma. Cate Le Bon accompanies him in Now all gone ("he played in my band for a time, it's fantastic") and the priestess of folk Vashty Bunyan does the same at the farewell of the album, Will I See You Tonight? , with some violins to stay to live. "Vashty personifies motherhood. His music was a mother to me for many years and since we met, I ask him everything, he has a very particular, obvious wisdom that helps me a lot. I'm very lucky to be something more than a fan, of being part of my family. "

Finally: What does kantori ongaku mean? "It's a nod to the Yellow Magic Orchestra, I'm a fan of Ryuichi Sakamoto and Haruomi Hosono. They have a song that I love, all in Japanese except the chorus, which is in English, in which 'country music' is heard, which in Japanese is kantori ongaku: it is a tribute in reverse. "

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