• Interview Maka: "Music has made me useful, it has been my rescue"
  • Lapili Interview: "Jamaica helped me empower myself because being fat is the model of beauty there"
  • Idols All interviews in the series IDOLS

Born and raised in Granada, Luis Abril 'Nitro' and Manuel Hidalgo 'Indio' take the sounds of their city to fuse flamenco, electronic and neo-funk in La Plazuela.

They arrive at the interview with their suitcases in tow after presenting their first album, Roneo Funk Club, in Madrid. In just a couple of years they have gone from playing versions of songs in Granada pubs to monopolizing the attention of the media and the public thanks to a risky and localist proposal that they like. And a lot.

QUESTION - What were you looking to convey with this first album? What is your concept?

NITRE- We wanted both the songs and the aesthetics to be very "this is us". At no time, for example, have we had actors in the videos. It's all very representative.

Q.- What inspires you?

INDIAN- Well, personal experiences. Also, this album has been very therapeutic and we have brought out demons that were inside. We always try to make what we tell in the songs as true as possible because we don't like imposed speeches. In the end the only truth one can be sure of is the one he has lived. That's why there are so many references to Granada, because they are the spaces where things have happened in our lives.

Q.- Do you have routines when creating?

I.- We usually start the songs separately, but there is always a point where we get together and start to get our hands together. But it is true that we see the fact of writing as something very personal. In addition, as we are sad we are always taking out the fatigue that we carry inside and in the end that is something personal and that we respect a lot.

In the end the only truth one can be sure of is the one he has lived through.

Q.- Could the Plazuela without Granada exist or would it be something else?

N.- Oh, no.

I.- In addition, we have listened to flamenco since we were very young and in flamenco lyrics, in the way of expressing themselves, there is always an attachment to the land. In the end it is the music that sings to the Albaicín, to Sacromonte, to Triana...

Q.- There has been a lot of talk lately about the Canary Islands as the cradle of successful urban artists, but what about Granada? There are also many of you who leave there.

I.- They ask us a lot because it is a city that for the small population it has there are many artists in it. I think that, to begin with, it is because of the weight that the University has. There are many young people in the city who live alone and who come wanting to take on the world. And then, and this is a reflection made by a journalist, in Granada a young person considers at least being a musician by profession. This is something that on other sites is not an option. But in Granada there are many rehearsal venues, many emerging bands, people playing in the street... That atmosphere feeds back and in the end you keep in mind that you can live from music.

Q.- So in your families they supported you when you said you wanted to live from this or was there reluctance?

N.- I think that in my family we have realized that nothing assures you a future no matter what you do. So my parents have always let me dedicate myself to what makes me happy. I have always had their unconditional support. They probably have eaten more comments of "your child should do this or that".

I.- Yes, I think my parents have been crying for two weeks, since they have heard the whole album. In the end we know that outside the family environment there are many people who give their opinions, because giving an opinion is free. But, of course, they are the ones who have seen us leave home many nights at twelve with the guitar to go to work on Tuesday, January 17, cold and raining to a pub where three people were going to see you. That's why, of course, now they get excited.

N.- We also come from a very strong crisis, that of 2008, which has marked a generation. We have grown up watching how our older cousins have studied, trained and eaten shit. So it's like we are children of that crisis and we can't go any further down.

Q.- How do you understand music? What does it mean for you?

I.- I think I do it out of emotional necessity. When I first wrote a song I felt that my mood changed drastically and, to this day, it is still what gets me up. In the most difficult times of my life listening to music has been what has saved me. So when I had the opportunity to create it, it multiplied incredibly.

N.- It's the same for me. In addition, I started making songs when I was very young, when I was nine or ten years old. I had an older cousin who forced me to rap. It wasn't because I liked it, it was because it forced me. He would go into a room and make me make a song. It's amazing how everything came out of an obligation. And then the rest of my life I haven't done anything else.

We are aware that we have the diamond in the rough that is the culture in Andalusia

Q.- And as for the vindication of Andalusian culture? How conscious or planned?

I.- Yes, it arises a little naturally. In the end there is an attachment to the land and culture of Andalusia that defines our identity as a people. And, above all, because I think that the culture of Andalusia has been greatly underestimated and because we are also part of a generation that is trying to change the stigmas that exist. So it's true that we don't like to get too political, but in the end we come from where we come from and we know what's out there. Obviously there are things that we would like to see different and we are aware that we have a diamond in the rough that is our culture in Andalusia. Because we will not have anything else, but yes, and we must defend it tooth and nail.

Q.- Introducing these local references in your music makes them reach places like Madrid, Zamora or Galicia. There are more and more artists who are fostering that pride in their land.

I.- Yes, I, for example, feel just as identified with groups like Califato 3/4, from Andalusia, as I have felt watching Baiuca defend its Galician culture. I have never been to Galicia but I see him and I say "fuck, it's amazing how he defends him and with what affection and love for his land". In the end it is not a patriotic feeling, it is one of cultural attachment. And as long as it's cultural it's beautiful. There are more and more artists like this, in Asturias there is also Rodrigo Cuevas. I think it's nice that at a time when everything is so globalized and we tend to make everything the same, to be able to look back at the culture of your grandparents, and realize that it is special and unique. And it's yours.

Q.- Outside of music, who are your references?

N.- Mine José Luis Sampedro.

I.- For me my colleagues, my mother, my father, my sister...

N.- Well, yes, family always.

Q.- I liked that the album starts with the sound of the sharpener. How did the idea come about?

I.- Well, I wanted to connect a lot with my childhood and that part of my life that I had to solve with myself. That is why it takes place in a very specific environment and there is talk of the Darro Valley, San Nicolás, the Albaicín neighborhood... I was born in the Paseo de los Tristes and my childhood is there. Then it seemed to me that there was no more beautiful way and that connected more with that part than the sounds I remember when I was little. They were those: the butane one, the one who sold oranges, the sharpener, the mothers scolding the children... I wanted to leave it marked because the sounds of the neighborhood are no longer those. Now they are those of tourists taking pictures.

Q.- Are you afraid of losing your essence?

N.- No. I mean, I'd be worried about losing her, but I don't see why it would happen. In addition, let's see, we are 25 years old and we are not wise of life, but I do think we are kids with things quite clear. We know why we are here, how we want to be and what we want to do. So I don't think we lose our way of being or our purity.

Q.- The only collaboration on the album is that of Juanito Makandé.

N.- Well, there are also the backup singers in a song, 'Camino de Cristales', which are Aroa Fernández and Aroa Palomo. But yes, external to what is the group La Plazuela, which we consider them part, has been only Juanito.

Q.- How did it come about?

I.- Well, in the most natural way in the world. We were in the studio and I had to come in to sing that fandango. He went down to heat the coffee in the kitchen while I was drinking water and started singing it because he had been listening to it all morning and started humming like that over it. And we looked at him and said, "It sounds like you shit, why don't you sing it to yourself?" He said okay, I come in, he recorded it and that's how it stayed.

N.- It's also cool because he's been our idol for a long time and we could have used him for one of the singles and the collaboration is on the weirdest song on the album.

Q.- Where do you see yourselves in five years?

N.- Well, I imagine myself leaving Madrid, because we come here to live in September. Then I see myself already going to a place near the beach and hopefully with a lot of money.

Q.- Are you coming to Madrid? Are you really not afraid of losing your essence?

I.- That goes. Look, that question was asked to Camarón a long time ago and he said the famous phrase that purity when carried inside really must never be lost. What happens is that we are a little up to the noses of AVE up, AVE down, sleeping in hotels, eating out ... We want to have a little orderly life. And in the end as in this country everything is here, which is something that would not be bad to give a twist because everything has to go through Madrid, because you have no choice. For a while we think it's going to be much more comfortable and here we also have a lot of friends, who are beasts playing, and we want to be with them and get together to make music.

N.- It is also good to know other sites, other parties, other cultural spaces. In the end Granada we have melted it.

Q.- You can always replicate here the parties you organize in Sacromonte...

N.- We are going to try to keep them in Granada even though we are here. I am the city that I want to bet on and for which I want cultural movements to continue happening and the one that I want to grow. It's making money here to get you there.

We have tried to make young people not feel like foreigners in their own neighbourhoods.

I.- Yes, in addition the parties arose for a very localist reason. That is precisely what we talked about tourism is eating the city at a rate that seems insurmountable. We have tried to do our bit so that young people do not feel like foreigners in their own neighborhoods, because I have colleagues of my age or younger who are from Granada all their lives and have never entered a cave in Sacromonte. That there are buses and buses of Chinese and Japanese there every day getting into the caves and that the people of our city do not even know what a cave looks like inside, it is a pity. That's why they have that point so localist that it would not make sense to get it out of there.

Q.- Indian, your prediction in five years was missing.

I.- I hope I have assimilated all this and that the roller coaster that brings you living from music, which is euphoria and low spirits all the time, stabilizes a little. To have my head calm and to be able to live well.

Q.- Finally, what is your opinion of the groups that have merged flamenco music before you?

N.- They are people who have opened many doors so that we can also do what we do today. In the end they are people who have risked at the time and we admire them all very much. The art I like is that of artists who have the ability to transgress, merge and risk.

I.- Yes, maximum respect to those people who opened the door. We make music for people like Pata Negra, Veneno, Triana, Ketama, Enrique Morente, Camarón... If they hadn't existed, I probably wouldn't have considered making songs.

  • Idols
  • music
  • HBPR

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more