ANA DEL BARRIO Madrid
Madrid
Updated Wednesday, April 3, 2024-23:19
Hakuna, the fashionable Catholic group, will be the highlight of the II Festival of the Resurrection, which will take place on Saturday starting at 6:30 p.m. and which aims to bring together 100,000 people.
Who is Hakuna for those who don't know you? It is a movement of the Catholic Church that was born in 2012. We are a family that started with a group of young people who wanted to follow Christ by sharing life. Specifically, Nova Friburgo (Brazil) was the birthplace of what we know as Hakuna. One hundred university students traveled there for a month to help in this area that had suffered collapses. The trip culminated with the World Youth Days in Rio de Janeiro. Upon returning to Spain, this group felt the need to continue meeting to share the life of faith in community. What are you going to offer at the concert of the II Festival of the Resurrection, which is celebrated on Saturday in Cibeles? Our songs, our excitement and our joy of celebrating the Resurrection. We want to pray with the tens of thousands of people who will come and give many thanks to God together for life. In your performances, in addition to singing and dancing, you pray, right? They are very special moments of prayer. There are thousands of people who sing with you and it is easy to experience communion. However, the current trend is to ridicule kids who practice Catholicism. Why? This social rejection can arise when Catholicism is reduced to a series of prohibitions. If faith is understood as moralism, it is somehow normal that it is difficult to accept. It is necessary to know Jesus and follow him with dedication to experience how he transforms life. However, the world depicts mirages of freedom and autonomy that only make us more slaves... Are you surprised that people who are not believers go to your recitals? No, quite the opposite: it is logical and normal. Everyone understands the language of love. Some believe that Hakuna's triumph is a reaction to the perreo of reggaeton and the hypersexualization of current music. I couldn't tell you if it is a response to the perreo. What is clear is that today's world, young people, the entire society is thirsty for something more. We find ourselves in a world where relativism, materialism and the dissolution of the family have permeated our lives. Young people, children and adults, faced with this panorama, see our thirst to love and be loved, a thirst for happiness that is not satisfied by the world. When one lives in this thirst and finds the only one who can satisfy it, one cannot help but go drink... The thirst is not for Catholic music but for God. Who composes your songs? There are many of us. Normally, the lyrics are experiences that someone lives and, on other occasions, they are psalms. In music there is also everything: there are those who make lyrics and music, there are those who receive the lyrics and become infected with the experience that the lyrics tell and then they start playing music... At Hakuna Group Music we say that we live what we sing and we sing what we live. Did you ever think how successful you were going to be and that you would be a viral phenomenon? No, I don't think you ever think that,We never plan strategies. We are simply enjoying what we see. What would you say to those who think that you are a cult? That the doors of Hakuna are wide open: whoever wants to come should come and see. To go to holy hours, for example, you don't even need to warn. Sometimes they reach us
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asking: What do I have to do to go to something in Hakuna? The answer is the same: come. Sometimes, if it is an activity that is convenient due to logistics, a registration form is made. Do you have a relationship with Opus Dei? Of course! In fact, in our
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song we remember many other movements, parishes, congregations... The Church is very big and very beautiful. We also have a very good relationship with religious congregations such as Iesu Communio, the Carmelites, the Little Sisters of the Lamb, the Sisters of Charity... Each charism of the Church has such a great richness that it is exciting to be able to be in close contact with each one and live communion. How has it changed your lives? God changes life radically. And he does it constantly. Are young people experiencing a religious awakening? Young people are not stupid and we do not believe what the world sometimes tries to sell us. We have a sense of smell, a lot of sense of smell to detect the truth and also courage to follow it. A large part of the population sees Catholicism as something old and out of fashion. Is Hakuna a response to this vision? We say that Hakuna, like every reality of the Church, is a whim of God and God is never out of fashion. The main activity that characterizes our group is the holy hours. But we also do volunteer work that we call
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, life groups that come together to train and create families, getaways, retreats, training, Soul College (a study center to enjoy being a person)... The truth is that you have connected with the young people. For example, you have modernized the masses with the holy hours. What has to change in the Catholic Church to get even closer to them? Well, first of all, holy hours are not masses. The mass and specifically that on Sunday is the centrality of the life of the Christian and we live the masses just like any Catholic. Holy hours are adorations of God that have been carried out in the Church for a long time. At Hakuna we like to worship with the music we have composed, but, above all, we have the experience that moments of worship are an encounter with the Truth and with God who dialogues with man, calls, heals, gives peace and brightens the heart...Does it make sense in these times to be listening to a priest's sermon without there being any type of dialogue with the parishioners? Of course! We parishioners talk a lot, at least I don't stop talking. Of course, there are times to speak and others to listen. Is Hakuna being a small revolution within the Church? The true revolution was started by Jesus more than 2,000 years ago and the entire Church is part of it. It is said in one of our first songs, which, in fact, is called that:
Revolution.
What advice would you give to a young atheist? Let him seek to be completely happy, let him live and not be satisfied with surviving. We are all made to be loved by God. If Jesus Christ were born today, would he have followers on Instagram? Perhaps we should first ask ourselves if he would have Instagram. Or better yet, why wasn't Jesus Christ born in a time like the current one, in which the media and social networks seem to facilitate the spread of a message? Why was he born in a tiny, unknown village in one of the most remote regions of the Roman Empire? Why did he choose 12 people of little influence as his main followers? Jesus Christ was resurrected and is present through the Church: this is easier than Instagram!