Beirut, 1968. The violinist
Ara Malikian
played on Tuesday night to welcome their Majesties, the Magi from the East, to Madrid.
Four days before he did the same with the travelers from Barajas.
With everyone he shared the music from his album 'Petit garage', created during the pandemic.
On January 1, he received the travelers from the Barajas airport with his violin. Why did you want to play there? The airport is an instrument to be able to travel. And from one day to the next it has gone from being the most normal and ordinary place to being the most exotic. It is the symbol that if everything is normalized, we will travel again, do concerts, and it will once again be a place of passage.How did you 'cook' 'Petit garage'? I did not even plan to make a record, but when I was stopped to it was a very creative time for me. I wrote a lot and recorded practically two albums. Everything, in general, with violin and piano, which is the training that we adapted when we were allowed to tour again. What has your personal experience been like during the pandemic? I feel very lucky. First, because no one around my family has been infected and we are healthy. That is the main thing. Also, I've gone from doing 120 concerts a year to being at home. I missed them. And I think they do me too. And we had a great time. I discovered things about my son, my wife and it was very beautiful, a very inspiring moment. Very thought-provoking too. When everything is normalized, I think we have to make a hybrid. Because I love to play, but I also realized that I love being with my family. See my son grow up, be part of his education and not let him grow up without us. And in the labor aspect? The tragic part is all the concern of all the colleagues, the entire sector of culture that is unemployed, without work short term. We do not know if they will be able to feed their families. We have gone from having 30 people in my company to less than 10. And all my colleagues are out of work. Last year he gave 75 performances. How were they? I was amazed to see how people dared to come to the concerts, despite the fear and all the information or misinformation. Of course, the most important of all is health. But for you to be okay with your health, you first have to be okay with your mental health. And art and culture give you mental health. What do you remember of those recitals? You played for hundreds of 'owls', because you only saw eyes. And the eyes had a happy expression. The most emotional concerts that I have done in my life, and I have been doing concerts for 40 years, have been in the pandemic. My eyes told me: "Help me." And that's how I took it: help with the music. On the album there is a song, 'Nana wrinkled'. I composed it thinking of all the elderly and vulnerable people who have been isolated. Many of them have had to say goodbye without having anyone by their side. But I don't see her sad. It is hopeful. Because hope is the only thing we have left. If we are sad, we are lost. You have lived through a war, that of Lebanon. What do you learn from these extreme situations? In a war you can think in a respectful way and try not to foster hatred towards the other. But if the other side kills a relative, it's hard to contain the hatred. And this is the beast. I don't like to talk about this, but we had a member of our family who was killed by a bombing and we knew which side launched it. But you can't generalize and say that I hate all these people because they killed my cousin. We must learn not to return violence with violence. It is a very important learning and it is very hard too. But we need it so that we can live in a better world. Some say that music can be used to solve conflicts. But could you make an Armenian violinist and an Azerbaijani violinist sit together to play? They just can't. It is also the eternal fight that I had with my fellow Armenians now. Because, of course, we are talking about a war where many people died. And if we continue with hatred, for example, towards Azeris, this is never going to end. We have lost meaningless lives. Because I freak out that today, in the 21st century, people still kill themselves over borders. It is unacceptable. The solution is to realize that you are not our enemies, that there are no more enemies in this world. You are a great lover of Bach. Many people did not know until recently that the zarabandas he composed come from Africa. Bach was a poor musician, in his day. He did not have the possibilities to travel, but he had such an open mind that he was only interested in what music was made in the rest of the world. And he had the obsession of looking for scores from other cultures. Bach is exactly an example of diversity and multiculturalism, despite the fact that he could not travel. How about 'canceling' Wagner's music because of the personality of its author. Wagner was a 'motherfucker', yes, definitely. But not his music. What is the role of the musician in our days? Musicians have this power to enter the soul of the public, to heal. It is something that makes you a better person. Especially for children, whom it helps to grow in a more sensitive, more conscientious way. There is no doubt that it makes you live in a better society. And hopefully we can have more music for everyone. As a result of the granting of Spanish nationality to James Rhodes, a complaint from 2013 has been recovered: "Today after 15 years of legal residence in Spain, working and paying my taxes, I have been denied Spanish nationality. "I was not very happy that they removed me. At that time I complained because I did not want any plug. I wanted to do the legal process like everyone else, like all foreigners. I was very disappointed because I complied with everything and was denied. And if they did it to me, imagine how many people who deserve to have nationality have been rejected. It is a very interesting question, I think it is good that they give it to James Rhodes, to people who deserve it, but it is true that there is a lot of injustice in this regard because you do not have to be someone important to be given nationality. I believe that we are all important. It is a very complex issue, and there are always exceptions like Rhodes, but I believe that we should all have the same rights.
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