VALENCIA. To begin with, a message of calm to our audience: if in the last few days you have noticed a fast buzz going through the streets of Valencia, don’t worry. It was probably daniel broncano (Orcera, Jaén, 1986) carrying out one of his habitual routines: flee from purism and orthodoxy in classical music and cultural management. Manager of the Cordoba orchestra and clarinetist, for a decade he has directed Música en Segura, a festival that escapes corsets and stiffness to develop small sound adventures in an Andalusian town of 140 inhabitants. On January 10, Broncano participated in the Fronteras Festival giving a workshop on the creation and organization of music festivals. We took advantage of the visit to talk about art and its peripheries, but also about that widespread maxim among certain professionals in the sector according to which if the public does not come to your event, it is their fault for not being up to the task. In case doubt eats away at the astute reader: yes, indeed, he is the brother of that other Broncano.
In that heterodox and iconoclastic vocation that we mentioned, Música en Segura calls itself a “disruptive” festival. Not surprisingly, one of his hallmarks is breaking with certain codes that we associate with classical music. Thus, for example, he moves away from the solemnity of the great auditorium to offer concerts in the mountains at dawn accompanied by a breakfast of migas and sausages. “When it comes to classical music, we take things for granted that haven’t always been that way. This context of large auditoriums and a slightly corseted liturgy responds to a question of the market, of having orchestras that were becoming more professional and had to be financed. For this, more public was needed. Our initiative seeks to remove the performances from that environment and that the artists’ heads and hearts light up when playing at 7:30 in the morning in a village in the middle of the mountain. And also to the public, whose senses are more alert”.
Another issue that the clarinetist carries by flag is the defense of the sensory. From the connection with Brahms, Schubert o Liszt through the senses and emotion, not from a forced or imposed intellectualization. “This is one of the barriers that from classical music we have to break. There is a part of the public that doesn’t listen to these compositions regularly and one of the things they say the most is ‘I don’t understand it’. And there is really nothing to understand. Like if you go to any Michelin starred restaurant and you like the food or you don’t. Another thing is that you want to analyze how a work is made compositionally. But from the point of view of the cultural fact, the only thing that matters is what a work makes you feel, what it transforms you into”, he points out, who has also been in charge of the Religious Music Week of Cuenca and the Early Music Week. from Alava.
Thus, he argues that Beethoven “He is still one of the great influencers in the history of art, his music has an impressive vitality and strength… and that does not require understanding anything; it is valid now and it will be valid in 200 years. If there is music that seems boring to you, perhaps the composer wanted it to be boring. And if there is an unpleasant one – like some current contemporary music – then it is because the world is sometimes unpleasant and that is what the composer wants to do. There is nothing to understand, only to feel and what you feel is fine. Emotions must be validated. I wonder what message classical music has been transmitting to think that you must understand it with other codes beyond what you listen to”.
By means of this retro vade to purism and exclusive orthodoxy, Broncano draws, in reality, a hymn to the artistic experience as a motor of the imagination: “the marvelous role of culture is to help us open our heads, to present other possible realities. In its beginnings, Música en Segura raised a lot of skepticism. People asked if folkloric music would be made, jotas… which is very good and, of course, it is a possibility, but I said ‘I like them! Mozart y Nielsen and I’m from here! And this is also part of the potential of art: to look beyond, to fly with the mind”.
“There is a huge idealization of the rural world”
When dealing with projects that take place in rural areas, a couple of fears tend to poke their ears on the horizon of cultural agents. On the one hand, there is the fear that the spaces in which the activities take place will be perceived as a simple decoration in a green key. Or what is the same, to look like a nosy skydiver and just landed in the location that he touches that day. On the other, we run the risk of falling into paternalism towards the inhabitants of the peripheries and developing different declinations of the myth of the noble savage. “There is an enormous idealization of the rural world, everything is expected to have an extreme level of authenticity, that the world is being saved… It seems that if you live in a small town, you have to grow organic carrots, not order things from Amazon… What has to happen with culture is that it happens wherever, whenever and however. In the cities, in the villages, in the jungle…”. This idealization also affects “how we hope the relationship with the community will be. There is a somewhat colonialist vision: it is great that some residents of the town come to Música en Segura, but the rest don’t give a damn Bachin their right they are!”.
Next, we propose to the readers of Culturplaza An experiment: start a conversation with different cultural managers and wait for the issue of creating and consolidating audiences to appear on the scene. Spoiler: it always comes out. Broncano is clear about it: consolidating audiences goes through “a good marketing job”. “In the world of classical music there is a certain discourse that what we program is great and it should fill the space by itself. And that if it is not full, the public is stupid. As if your product had just landed out of the sky and the world should be cheering for it. But it is that everything in life needs marketing. Rosalía needs marketing, the Catholic Church needs it to spread faith in God and they have been 2,000 years…” defends. What’s more, he criticizes that, in general, in non-mainstream art “we have certain complexes when it comes to marketing ‘in the wild’, that is, urgently, whatever. The English have been selling to Shakespeare like crazy for 500 years. And Shakespeare wrote wonderful plays, but if you don’t spread it, you reach far fewer people. There is a prejudice for which it seems that if you do a lot to sell tickets you are distorting your product”.
The current panorama of music festivals (whether in a state or Valencian key) presents us with a scenario full of options, yes, but in which cloned posters abound, traced programming. In fact, for some time now the debate on whether there is enough public to absorb so much offer has been gaining momentum. Also about whether the mass event model is sustainable and about its effects on the rest of the music industry, from the most modest bands to concert halls. With all these cards on the table, does the future involve betting on smaller nature encounters and more experimental DNA? Once again, Broncano flees from exclusive or antithetical positions. The key, for him, is diversity with room for everyone. “Compared to other countries, I wouldn’t say that there are too many festivals in Spain. Hopefully culture has more and more space and the problem is that in each town there are ten festivals. There are also many bars and many cafeterias”. “Of course,” he continues. In a more culturally mature market, different, well-thought-out and extravagant formats are being created, but the first step is for there to be a wide offer. The massive mainstream proposals and the more specialized and minority ones have to coexist. At the same time that ten mainstream festivals appear, two or three that are much more curious and specific appear”.
Hearing “Delicatessen” also in a Valencian key
Beyond the disruption outlined above, the Segura de la Sierra event is presented as an enclave of hearing “delicatessen”. A concept that in the Valencian territory could adopt the clothing of events such as the Volumens festival, which combines contemporary art, music, science and technology; the Ensems, focused on contemporary sound creation; or the Serial Parc model, which does not take music to the mountains, but does take it to the city parks. From that vocation of the immense minorities, we consulted Broncano for his favorite proposals from the Valencian territory. After all, he is not new to these parts, in fact, he recently participated as a jury at the V Carles Santos Awards for Music. “There is the Festival dels Horts, organized by the pianist Antonio Galera in Picanya. Also the Godella Chamber Music Residency Festival. And the Penyíscola Early Music Festival. And I’m only talking about the world of classical music, which is the one I control the most, but there are all kinds of them. That is to say, although these massive and very similar models exist, much more original proposals also emerge and gain strength. There is hope”.
And here is a Mediterranean self-esteem pill: “one thing that I greatly admire about Valencia is how developed socio-musical integration is thanks to the bands. The entire musical planet knows and admires the model of the Valencian bands, something unique in the world, just as the system of orchestras in Venezuela has been studied. In this territory it is understood that music, in addition to an identity issue, is an essential element of development”.
About pianos that don’t fit through the door
Outside idyllic masks: talking about cultural management is also talking about failures, setbacks and mending. “I started organizing festivals with a lot of desire and curiosity, but without having a clue. In the first edition in Segura, for example, we didn’t want to rent a piano because we thought it wouldn’t fit through the church door. Of course, I did not realize that the legs could be disassembled… It is something quite naive and from not having any experience. But, year after year, you find out things, you gain security ”, he explains. The vertigo does not disappear, but you learn to live with it: “you get used to taking risks and feeling nervous.”
Perhaps, that knot in the pit of the stomach has not completely dissipated because in cultural management there is “no magic wand or universal methodology. In each environment you have to see what can work… It is essential to spend some time reflecting until you find what you think will work in that model, with that town hall or that council, with those sponsors…”. And with respect to projects that start “very small, from an individual or from a small group of people, the first thing is to trust in one’s own ideas and try. Even if it seems a bit crude or sour, it is important to try to carry out your projects without expecting the world to thank you, without expecting anything in return, just for you.”.
By the way, Broncano still has to see store, the film starring a fictitious director of the Berlin Philharmonic that addresses both the entrails of musical creation and the mechanisms of power. But if the reader needs some urgent recommendation on fictional products that address the sound ecosystem, here is yours: Mozart in the junglea series that reflects “both the daily life of orchestra musicians and the needs of cultural institutions to finance themselves.”