Interview.Juancho Marqués: "The message I was giving was fucking wrong"
Interview.Israel Fernández: "I am completely sure that any young man likes a beautiful song"
Interview.Miguel Gane: "One of my biggest fears is that in 20 years nobody will remember me and I'm just a kid who published poems on the networks"
María José Llergo
(Pozoblanco, 1994) has understood that there is nothing more unique than oneself.
Far from looking like a coaching guru, what she has achieved is to turn into strengths what others might point out as weaknesses.
"
Nobody is going to be better than you
, with the family you have, your roots and the place where you were born. It is good that we remember the importance of the essence," he says.
An only daughter, she grew up in a humble family, surrounded by the countryside and listening to her grandfather sing every day
while working.
He says that it was he who taught him to enjoy music without asking anything in return, "to surrender to cante without pretensions."
Her mother is
also very present among her influences
, with her way of speaking using archaisms or vulgarisms
according to the RAE but which she defines as "precious words".
"The other day he told me 'you're out there, banduenda'. It is like
a person who knows the rules of the place where he is but chooses not to follow them
. Someone wandering conscientiously," he says.
And it's a perfect definition for your music.
The Cordovan woman
spreads flamenco with all kinds of sounds
and transfers those particularities of its essence -the land, the family, Andalusia- to her work.
Just before the confinement he released
Sanación
(Sony Music), his first studio album.
In an industry where numbers and the hit of the moment prevail, he stops to sing what comes from within him.
Even if that means writing lyrics like
Nana del Mediterráneo
, where she speaks to all those who die crossing the sea.
Q.- Why is the land, the field, so important to you?
A.-
It makes me feel free because I
try to find a field in the most remote places, even in industrial areas
.
In the middle of the asphalt a butterfly passes and so many memories come to my mind and it gives me such a feeling of freedom that it is my greatest inspiration.
That is why nature is in all my lyrics.
It is something that I feel part of, that I feel responsible for and I also feel that she has me.
It is a meeting point with myself.
Q.- Defending the field seems like a novel discourse, when the field has always been there and is not an entity that arises suddenly
R.-
It is the importance of the essence, not the appearance.
It strikes me very much that it seems something new when in reality it is what we all have and sometimes we do not value.
That is the penalty, that just for not having valued it seems new to us.
They asked me a question the other day that bothered me a bit.
It was like: being a country girl, don't you feel privileged to be able to make your dream come true?
And I said that my greatest wealth is my origins and that they do not condition me negatively at all.
That is to say, I realize my dream because I have worked a lot on it since I was very little, but country
people are not limited intellectually or in any way
.
Q.- It is true that there are many stigmas around 'the rural'
R.-
Because it is unknown that
a pastor can be the best philosopher that you find
.
It is unknown that a farmer can understand life better than people from other fields.
My grandfather's learnings remain with me forever.
However, I have knowledge that I acquired in college that is gone.
See this post on Instagram
At the age of 19 and after one thought about what to do with his Selectivity grade, he told his family that he was not going to choose "the normal career" that they believed.
She was moving to Barcelona to study at the Liceo
with a scholarship she had found on the internet.
He had spent his whole life training on the violin and singing.
He had decided that it was time to bet on it 100%.
So much so that he confesses that for six years all he did was study.
Q.- At 19 years old and independent in Barcelona, did you not waste your time, get out of phase, go out to party or anything of the people of that age?
R.-
I have not had that kind of lag student life.
For me the priority was another.
It was having the opportunity to cultivate, as if I were in the field and was a little plant watering me with knowledge.
And also that fills me a lot, a lot.
I was hooked because the more I knew, the more I wanted to know.
And the more I knew the better person I think I was being
.
So it was to cultivate myself personally, intellectually and also musically.
Because watering yourself is watering your art, it is watering your letters, it is watering the perspective of the world you may have.
It opens you up a lot and that was my freedom too.
Q.- Are you obsessed with nurturing your art?
R. -
It is a necessity.
The day I don't read I'll die a little inside.
The day I don't sing I'm going to die inside
.
What a book gives me is so beautiful, what a singer gives me or what a painter gives me, which for me is as essential as the food itself.
I couldn't live without books, but I couldn't live without water either.
Q.- Have you always been so mature?
R.-
I think it was based on sticks.
And, let's see, I'm already 26 years old.
But I think it is a position that you acquire in the face of what happens to you in life.
Many times things happen to you that a priori are very painful and you have two options: either learn from them or get pissed off and hurt yourself.
So in that aspect I think I
have learned a lot from my family to overcome, to be resilient, to look long term
.
Knowing that what you do today is going to have an effect tomorrow.
In other words, let no one choose for you, let it be you who chooses your own destiny, your own steps.
That if you make a mistake, nothing happens because you have chosen it.
Q.- Have you ever been afraid to open up to lyrics?
A.- Let's
see, it
hurts a lot when you feel that they don't understand you or that they judge you without knowing you
and they tell you 'it's that you are this' or 'you are not this'.
No, man, I know what I am, I don't need you to tell me.
So from the moment you know yourself, love yourself and accept yourself, what others say I don't care.
What the media say, I don't care.
The headlines, I am not a headline.
I've never wanted to be and never will be.
Be it good or be it bad.
Is it scary?
I was very afraid of the exhibition, that is why I am so reluctant to social networks
, that is why I did not do an interview for a year.
A whole year.
Because I had a bad experience with a media outlet that made a headline that hurt a lot.
And little by little I was accepting that, as in everything, there are good and bad experiences and that it depends on me, on how I overcome it.
See this post on Instagram
Q.- What has been the hardest moment as a professional?
R.-
Well, especially these headlines that hurt you, that use the word black or gypsy in a derogatory way.
Without really knowing where you come from or anything.
But it is one thing that I believe can be changed, and it is a dream that I have.
That people understand the word black or gypsy never as something derogatory but rather as something qualitative, as a precious quality
.
Like a dignity that should never have been lost in the message.
And that also, I don't know, institutions such as the RAE stop putting definitions, for example, in the word gypsy, trickster.
It seems to me Neanderthal, with respect to Neanderthals.
Q.- Have you had many problems with racism?
A.-
We are going where we are going. The first question they ask us is if I am a gypsy.
Its the first.
If they don't do it to me because they're ashamed, they ask Fati [Sony], and I'm a mixed bag.
That is, in my family tree there are people even from Equatorial Guinea.
A simple answer for someone, for me it is very complex because what is under your skin is not simple
.
And in the end what matters here is not that you have all the money in the world or where you come from,
what matters is where you are going and how you are doing it
.
With what bases, with what values, with what principles.
What hurts me is not how they identify me but that people use those words as something derogatory.
When I was little, because of my physical appearance they called me 'gypsy, black, ugly'.
It's one thing that I see that could have been a child's thing but in the end it's everywhere I go.
It is in the universities that I access, in the industry, in the press.
It is everywhere.
So it is a true reflection of society but at the same time I believe that it can change and that things are happening today.
It is a need of today's society, to understand diversity as something beautiful, something worthy, diverse and extremely rich
.
Not as something worthy of insult.
It seems archaic to me.
Q.- And the best moment?
R.-
The scenarios.
It is so beautiful when you see someone excited because you are singing something that comes to them.
Sometimes I can't sing about how excited I get.
Also my parents, let them see that they trusted me and it has its fruits.
It is precious that they can participate in my work, that they can feel recognized and recognize me.
Say: it's you, María José.
It is that you are, you come from there.
Although no one understands it.
Also to involve my grandfather, who instead of dedicating himself to cante chose to stay with his family, with his wife and thanks to that we are here.
Oh, that I get excited.
And that they triumph with me,
that everything good can be shared.
That is the most beautiful thing
.
The bad, I already eat it, which is my way.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
music
Idols
culture
Idols Naty Peluso: "I'm a super intense mine"
idolsDvicio: "No one came to see us at a firm in the Canary Islands"
Idols Nyno Vargas: "Many times I feel bad for showing that part of me about luxury and cars"
See links of interest
Last News
English translator
TV programming
Quixote
Movies TV
Topics
United States Elections
Stage 15 of the Tour of Spain, live: Mos - Puebla de Sanabria
Live, Rafa Nadal - Jordan Thompson
Omonia Nicosia - Granada CF
Real Sociedad - AZ
Alba Berlin - Barça