The sentences are crowded from six windows of a video conference by Zoom. Six calm men with high hopes of moving people. And we live in the time of emotions.

"The art and culture that interest us are those that make you think and those that stir you . "

Six thirty-year-olds in T-shirts taking turns trying not to seem like one of the most relevant pop-rock groups - because it is 2020 and pop-rock still exists - of the last decade in Spain. Old Morla are humble. They want to appear normal. But they have ends and they know the means. They have big ambitions: As Jeff Tweedy sings, they are trying to break your heart.

"At times we have touched emotional keys that have been important and with which many people have connected."

Hannah Arendt said in 1957 in her conference Labor, work, action that "there is only one genre of objects that has no place in the endless chain of means and ends, and it is the work of art, the most useless and at the same time most durable of the things that human hands can produce ». That is explained by emotion. But the German philosopher stresses: "To produce a piece of music requires the same work as to build less durable things." Six young men striving to try to be part of the lives of the people of their time.

"Work is one of the foundations of the group."

The sentences are piling up.

"We have always tried to x-ray the general state of our surroundings . "

Tens of thousands of people, or why not, hundreds of thousands, can recite entire letters of Vetusta Morla. Not the choruses. Not the most inspired verses. Whole letter. They are not stickers that adhere to people's memory. They are like tattoos.

" Having a commitment to reality is important to us, in the sense that reality is part of your artistic discourse and your way of presenting yourself to the world."

Illustration of Vetusta Morla.ULISES CULEBRO

Should music provoke something within people? A song should be that stone that breaks the engine, as you sing in Palmeras in La Mancha ? Yes, at least art and culture in general are those places where we look in the mirror, those spaces that generate identity, refuge, that can make us remember who we were and who we will be. It is true that the emotional is important in the band, but in the end the emotional is very subjective, emotional can be a song or when you see a flower that fades. There are a lot of things that the band has consciously decided to do throughout their career, which have been great risks that are part of that way of reaching people or that possible identity, or that relationship with the artistic: when we have decided jump off the screen, as the song also says, or break with the past, or do things that we were not used to ... So Vetusta is a band that can stand the test of time well, because it has tried at every moment to put part of the reality and context that we were living in his music and in his songs. And we want to understand that this is also how the public perceives it. That is why I think it was a relevant band in 2020 and it was in 2010, because we have made that effort to try to reinterpret our way of seeing the world and translate it into songs, and in everything we are doing.

Vetusta Morla have a new album that is actually only partially new. MSDL, Songs within Songs is a new version of the repertoire from their previous album, Same Place , Different Place , which was released in 2017.

The recording was to support a tour much desired by the group that traded sports venues for theaters and which began shortly before the state of alarm was approved and, with it, the cancellation of all concerts. «It was a completely different show from what we had been doing on the previous tour, with concerts for thousands of people. We believed that Same place, different place had to have a different format to present it live, and that is why we decided to make a much more theatrical concept that had to do with the performing arts ».

Old Morla SONY MUSIC

Before the show, Pucho - singer from the Madrid group - made an introduction as an actor. "It was like an invitation to calm, to reflection, to contemplation and to watch the songs with another emotional state", he explains, adding: "It is very curious that just at the beginning of the tour the virus forced us to have that stop, that reflection, that contemplation of the no-time that we asked for. That has made me reflect a lot, "continues Pucho. “We have always tried to radiograph the general state of our surroundings and offered our vision. The same thing happened to us three years ago, it seemed that we had anticipated in our music the social and political situation that was lived in those moments in Spain ».

Three weeks ago, Vetusta Morla published The Forbidden Embraces , a charity song composed and recorded during the confinement. Dedicated to the workers who have fought the pandemic, it is sung together with Rozalén, Joaquín Sabina, Christina Rosenvinge, Luz Casal, Leiva, Santi Balmes (Love Of Lesbian), Amaral, Ismael Serrano, Iván Ferreiro, Kase.O and Nacho Vegas, among others. Again, his need to talk about the present tense emerges.

«Our commitment to reality is important, not so much in the sense of meaning ourselves politically, but in that reality is part of our artistic discourse. We like to think that what we do and how we do it is the son of our time and is committed to reflecting a reality, "explain the members of the band, who for more than a decade have distinguished themselves by managing their careers independently, although his discs are published by the multinational Sony Music. “That is why we actively participate in the things that concern us, but like any citizen , be it an artist or be a hardware store owner. The citizen has to give his opinion and has to think that politics is not an electoral game, but rather a way of finding a community with values ​​that unite us and with the widest possible well-being ».

In that speech, his reflections on the coronavirus crisis are also framed . "Maybe we don't have to learn anything and we don't have to be better people after all this," says Guille Galván, one of the composers of Vetusta Morla. "Maybe what we have to do is realize that humanity has suddenly stepped back and that nature has taken a step forward, that we have a lot to reflect on our situation in the world, as responsible for a lot of things and also as people who must live in society, take care of each other ».

Are you going to enjoy music the same as before? Will we listen to it the same and will the musicians do it the same? It is being said from a very paternalistic point that a brutal reconversion is coming in all sectors, that everyone is going to have to eat shit, that everyone is going to have to lower their salaries. It gives a lot of anger, because it almost seems that it is said to prepare the ground and that people take it for granted. Well, it looks like there is going to be a large reconversion, but in the same way that it can serve to make people have worse conditions, it can also serve to make people knock on the table and take away the privileges of the generation. previous. As a society, it behooves us to be very attentive to these things and perhaps it is a good time to question a lot of things, our production models, our work models, our relationship models with others, to open that melon and to build the society that we want to build. And obviously, culturally, perhaps we have to wait long enough to have a normalized situation. It will probably happen the same as with 9/11, there will be a lot of measures that were put in place at the time with the aim of assuring us security and that, after that moment, have ended up becoming control measures on citizenship that we have taken for made. These are things to which we will have to be vigilant and fight so that the model we want to build is the most just for everyone.The flag appears as a symbolic literary figure in the lyrics of The Forbidden Embraces , an element that you use regularly, in Golpe teacher or Save yourself who can , for example. What do you think about seeing so many people wrapped in a flag now? A. Well, we are in a moment of oversizing certain things that perhaps are not as extensive as what we see in the media. We are much more concerned and the hunger that may be happening in the queues to get food in Aluche seems much more relevant than the demonstration of x people giving casseroles. The flag that can represent us the most at the moment is that of public health, for example, and there are certain flags that have been tried to appropriate one and the other symbolically that are much more interesting than the flags that serve to demonstrate that I am facing next door, which is what we are seeing now.

At various points in the conversation, members of the group refuse to "fill the pandemic with opinions and conjectures" and demand "prudence and not be here filling things with fear, dilemma or extreme positivism, because behind all this is a lot of people who literally risk their lives ». "We are seeing ourselves in a situation where there are many people making improvised decisions because there is no other," they say. “This is new and they are improvising from managers of small companies to presidents of autonomous communities or of government or ministers or whatever. It is very complicated », they conclude.

What was important to you as a group 15 years ago and what is important now? How has that changed? Many things have changed because we have become more professional and everything has become bigger and bigger, but what really motivates us and keeps us going has not changed anything. It continues to be that illusion, that interest in delving into music together, expressing ourselves and telling stories through songs and the conviction that we have the best colleagues. All this remains the center and the engine of Vetusta, everything else because it is a constant adaptation to what happens. Why do you think you have connected in such a profound way with so many people? The reasons why a band is successful, the reasons why a band connects with its audience, that is inexplicable ... They will be a series of factors of different kinds. Obviously the music, how we communicate with people, the lyrics ... Even the vital moment can also influence how we connect with the public. There is one key that seems evident, which is the emotional intensity of the lyrics and the way to interpret the music. Yes, there is a very important part of the communication which are our concerts and they have always been there. We have been fortunate to be together for many years, the band is very cohesive and that interpretation of what we do when we go on stage is very solid as they all convey the same emotion. And we have touched at some moments some emotional keys that have been important, with which many people have connected. What have you discovered about the group when recording a known repertoire again? Above all, we have discovered things about the songs and our creative process . We work a lot on the songs looking for their essence, transgressing their limits a bit. What makes us Vetusta is the impetus for research. In each album there is a point of risk, of going into the unknown, that is part of our idiosyncrasy. Without feeling that adrenaline rushing into the jungle with the same machete we would be a very different band. Is the essence of VetustaMorla then restlessness? Restlessness, of course, is an important part of our essence. It keeps us awake, it keeps us alive, the restlessness and the nonconformity with what we do.

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