Pamplona, 1971. While the fifth season of the popular Netflix series is being finalized, the actress, singer and composer
Najwa Nimri
presents 'AMA' (Mushroom Pillow), a bolero album made in a pandemic in which Pablo Alborán, Israel has collaborated Fernández, Álvaro Morte and Rusowsky.
Tell us this about how you think of Instagram as a straightforward business.
I can't understand someone doing it for free. If your economy is not supported in part by that ... why? But you get on my Instagram and everything has someone's 'hashtag'. It is a 'heavy' business. But 'heavy'. You pay for the flats like that, huh? Nobody who does not live it understands it.
And what is the key to not going crazy?
Being 50 years old. If I were 19 I would already be crazy. You've already gone through some areas where you say: oh, okay, this is the game now. The youngest I don't know how they will do it. I think they go pretty crazy. Because, apart, they have a conception of the time they have left, which is absolutely against the clock and makes them live in permanent stress where time is running out.
Can it become addictive?
For me it is very simple. It is not a drug, I am not hooked on whether I have more or fewer followers. I'm in a series that has hit it worldwide. I am so lucky and thanks to that I get income. And you have to have a kind of dialogue where what you show is more or less in tune with the people who follow you, so as not to go down to the underworld. It is a trade network.
I see, I see.
I do business. Can you do business without selling yourself? If possible. It is that it has no other purpose. If not, why? Everything is cyber marketing. And I am in the market. Now, I am not a romantic. I have never fallen into the trap of believing that to exploit myself is to fulfill myself. So my realization doesn't go through Instagram.
Why a bolero album?
I didn't know they were boleros. I swear. He told me that 'This afternoon I saw it rain' is a pop song, it can't be a bolero.
What are your memories of this music?
My mother sang 'Cute Doll' to me a lot of times. And when she wanted us to cry, even though she says no, Chavela Vargas would sing to us. That I hate it. I can't hear her, I hear a note and I get sick. It happens to me with Nina Simone, it happens to me with Chavela, it happens to me with all the great singers who squeeze your heart.
How would you define your approach to gender?
When I was clear about what this was, none of the references were valid for me, except Nat King Cole, who is like the only foreigner who approaches the bolero. And I feel like this: like a foreigner approaching the bolero.
And how does this fit into your music career?
With music I always make more progressive beats, except on the last album. I'm always looking for, I always like electronics, everything that goes forward. I like all these films that I make up and that don't really interest anyone else, except the first album, and that have to do with a world that I imagine. But now, suddenly, for the first time, I stopped and looked back.
Could we say that 'AMA' is a minimalist album?
It is really minimalist. In 'Viene de largo', my previous album, there was already a trumpeter who is Luis Miguel's, by chance, who was in the place next door. Here I did not want a big band, we wanted it to sound like a small town party, without putting too much emphasis on it, but to be that simple and small.
The album has a few interesting collaborations.
I called Alejandro Sanz the first and he said yes to 'Muñequita linda'.
And what happened?
That the song was too small. But he did the most important thing for me, which was to give me the go-ahead. You had to find the song where he was living well. It has that thing of pop and jondo, where there is a moan when it opens singing it is so 'heavy' that it needs a larger space. But when he said yes, I said: "Damn, I can still call singers who seem very good to me and they go and say yes too." And I farted one night.
What would you say is the lowest common denominator of all boleros?
They have this thing about being upstairs, trying to get through the day, but they have a strange tinge of melancholy. And it is because they are songs that were sung in the kitchens to wake up the shitty day. They are post-war songs. And they came out in a pandemic for me. I remember the "state of alarm". It was like the world has ended. I mean, it resonated with me so fucking ...
What is it like to be in the biggest series in the world?
When you travel to places, you freak out: hordes of rock, as if you had done 'Game of Thrones'. The other, okay, there is pressure, but it is still work with many people that I already knew from 'Vis a vis'. I mean, I'm in a field that I already know. All of that went with the virus. Because although in the 'cyber' it seems that everything continues to work, in real life people are on their own. So there has been a great break for people who have had a peak of popularity, those of 'La casa de papel' or anyone who has been doing any series that is hitting it. He has placed everything as in a low place where nobody was nobody. It's really insane.
How has the pandemic affected you creatively?
All I have done is stop and the forced stop has allowed me to pay attention to things that I would not have paid attention to. I have never made an album that was not fictional. All my albums talk about a kind of apocalyptic future where I imagine what has happened. I rarely take anything out of real personal stuff. That is why I like techno so much, because I get into a turbine where there is no thought. In other words, there is a horizontal thought and you prefer not to go talk to the one in front. I'm not interested. I don't believe in passions. There is one thing about giving a lot of value to passion that bores me sovereignly. I'm too northern for that. I feel the beat, but I make a great effort to disconnect from the heart so that it is not what takes me all the time.
And how does this match boleros?
Notice that my way of approaching the feeling has been through a bolero, which is the softest approach to the feeling. A bolero, which is like older people singing beautifully, quietly.
What effects do you think an experience like COVID is leaving us socially?
The vast majority of people, of course, lose hope. But it is that to create you have to be a believer. And if you are not a believer, you screw yourself. For me, it is what is happening on the planet: there is a terrible fear and everyone is 'screwed up'. And fear is very disgusting.
And those who come after us?
I trust thousand by thousand in the new ones, in those who will come. They have my full support. Because they are natives of this [points to mobile]. And they are going to turn it around there and the system is going to break from there.
Optimistic?
I have always lacked a 'tolai' illusion. "Everything is going to be fine" [He puts on the voice of 'flower eater']. No, everything is wrong and the bad guys are winning. But I have hope ... if the planet does not 'peta'.
Of all the social consequences of this, which one do you like the least?
We are in a very cloudy moment, in which it gives me the feeling that all these changes that should have happened are taking place from many fronts, with many colors, with many names. We are confusing justice with control. It is a very serious confusion, because you only learn from experience and no one is learning from experience. Something very dangerous.
Why?
The 'cancellation culture' is diabolical. In it there is a triad, where one is a hero, another is a villain and another is a victim. I prefer to be the villain, obviously. Clicking and reporting something doesn't make you a good person, asshole.
What do you think of your image that you 'sweat' everything?
From a very young age, I have never taken care of what I caused in the front, of what you think of me. And yes, it can be interpreted as my pussy sweating. Like I'm very haughty. I don't know of anyone who is more easily misunderstood.
Why?
I do not act on impulses that have to do with courage, but with unconsciousness. He plays very bad tricks on me. And then I don't have a directed ambition. I didn't know that before, but I know now. That combination is a Molotov cocktail. So, there was a moment when I made up my mind. And it is that I sweat 'heavy', but 'heavy' in bad plan. Actually, I have contained anger because I have had to shut up so many times, I have had to endure - like everyone else, it is worth - so much ... when at no time do I try to mess with anyone, never, ever. But there was a magical moment where the cosmos turned in my favor and I was able to put it into a character. And there I earned my place. Then the superpowers of the characters go away and the defects remain. And then from there you also have to go down and then continue.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
Know more
Instagram
The Money Heist
Pablo Alboran
Netflix
Alejandro Sanz
Game of Thrones
Vis a vis
culture
music
movie theater
Final Interview
The final interviewRussian Red: "The word whore violates me, but I find it interesting to reappropriate it"
ANALYSIS The Covid has caused "a devastating crisis" in culture and art, according to several international organizations
The World Wide OpenWilliam Deresiewicz: "This is the worst time to be an artist since World War II"
See links of interest
Work calendar
Home THE WORLD TODAY
Hungary - Portugal, live
France - Germany, live
Barça - Real Madrid