2023-07-30 11:03:16
Andrés Calamaro says that he is not looking for anything in particular “outside of singing well today”: “I have a history, yes, but I do not practice nostalgia. In this sense, if I am looking for something, I would be looking for the next music. However, now I am on tour and it’s hard for me to focus on other more specific things, although I can say that there are more albums to make”, he points out. The Argentine is locked in a tour that will take him to the Starlite Festival next week (July 29).
What do you think your followers expect from these concerts?
I suppose you expect to hear some of your favorite songs from this repertoire. Perhaps the wow factor is hearing one song inside another. Expectations, whether high or low, are as they are, we owe it to the public that pays for a ticket and to our own ethical conscience.
He began the tour in May, and about the tours, he has said that he does not expect pleasure from them, that they are rather a commitment. Commitments sometimes cost. Does it happen to you?
Pleasure and commitment in a single sentence sounds like the consecration of this trade. I have been a musician for many years, accessing hard tours is a privilege as well as a commitment.
He is immersed in a podcast project called Ni quivatos ni quinces, a podcast that he defines as an “ambitious cultural playground.” He has commented that the title is “code for rockers and outsiders, bandits and free thinkers”. What is a free thinker for you?
A rationalist, a reverse dogmatist.
He has reflected in an interview on how criticisms have been replaced by cancellations. Do you think we are in a society that cancels too easily? Hasn’t it always been like this?
I don’t know if it has always been like this, we’ll see when they install concentration camps for cancelled. These campaigns of aggressive indifference combine interesting doses of naiveté and cynicism.
What are you enjoying the most about the podcast format? He has said in an interview that before starting this project, he had not heard any. Does it now?
I still don’t listen to them. I think there are more podcasts than people.
When asked if she has cried for Maradona, has answered that he does not know how to cry. How does she get rid of certain emotions, then, in addition to the music?
Emotions have to be tempered, it’s okay to get excited at the movies but it’s not something to show off. I don’t pour my emotions into music either, it’s not something indispensable. I’m not the kind of man who cries. I prefer it that way.
In another recent interview, he said that “Spain treats its artists with indifference and taxes“. Is this how you have felt these years? Do you think that the situation will change at some point?
It is the final sentence of the book by Manuel Chaves Nogales, that of Martínez, the dancer who emigrated to Russia just before the Bolshevik revolution. It is not personal, nobody promised me anything and I am grateful to Spain. It also doesn’t have to be my personal experience to be true.
Among the emerging artists that he especially likes, he has highlighted the Argentine Dillom. Because? In addition to being a compatriot…
I am not a scholar of emerging music nor a contemporary listener. I don’t think it’s entirely possible to listen to a lot of music while we’re playing our own, and that’s almost always the case. As a listener I am cosmopolitan, I listen to singers from Jerez and Ponce, Puerto Rico.
Any emerging Spanish artist that inspires you or with whom you would like to collaborate? As he already did at the time with C Tangana…
I think I prefer submerged artists than emerging ones. When we’re not on tour, I’m quite open to collaborating with other performers if they call me. In general, I celebrate the music of my professional colleagues, I don’t want to point out what I didn’t like, nor do I listen to music if I don’t like it.
“Rock hasn’t become gentrified, but I have.” These statements were made last March. In what sense do you think you have become bourgeois? Do you think it is something that happens to all of us over the years?
It’s a joke to downplay the corporate status platitude of showbiz. I am a South American musician, I do not come from the bourgeoisie or the working class. I live without any kind of luxuries, I don’t have a car or watches, I’m not interested in traveling or going on vacation. It’s enough for me not to get up early to work eight hours and go home on public transport, it’s my main privilege. It is almost impossible for a musician to reach an old age with fortune. I would like to
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