2023-07-15 10:25:15
Rodrigo Cuevas He is the most glam, showy and distinguished member of that generation of young artists who have found in folklore a very modern means of expression and claim. The thing about this Asturian that on Sunday July 16, he performs at the Concerts de Vivers, he is not just going to add electronics to the melodies and traditional lyrical motifs of his land. He goes about looking for the collision and enjoying the effect like a mischievous child, as seen in ‘How is he?!’, one of the previews of his next album produced by the Puerto Rican Eduardo Cabra (Visitante en Calle 13). “I wanted to make a more danceable, more enjoyable record and I was also looking to generate an artistic tension between the most local repertoire I’ve ever made, with a producer totally unrelated to Asturian culture and see how that tension worked”.
To have ‘the summer of your life’, as the song says, is a good looking man, a good dance or a good swimming pool more important?
Everything helps. A good handsome man, a good dance… The pool is really the most dispensable.
You present yourself as a folkloric agitator. What is the first thing that folklore has to shake?
To all the people who stay holding the walls and never enter the dance. Shake up people who don’t participate in things, which is boring. In Asturias we have a word that is ‘repuntante’. ‘Disgusting’ is not ‘disgusting’, it’s like a curmudgeon. I come to agitate all the curmudgeons, who don’t let them do anything in life. They are heavy.
“Repuntantes” to power
But they do. They even come to power.
Man, they do arrive… You know it well from Valencia.
How do you live this?
Well look, at first with a lot of sadness because it’s like they’re getting things into the debate that shouldn’t be. But, at the same time, I think that this will cause people to stop being so relaxed and have some awareness. This album is also about that, about valuing what we have, celebrating it, being aware that learning to enjoy the things that others have built is an act of responsibility. Many times the celebration is seen as frivolous and I believe that celebrating is the most responsible of acts.
Does celebrating mean just having a good time?
Not just to have a good time. Also celebrate the environment in which we live, the friends we have, the freedom we enjoy, how delicious the food is, how fun it is to make love. Celebrate that we have a lot of very good things.
How far have we come to make celebrating revolutionary?
Well, to the point where the ‘repuntantes’ are winning the speech. Celebrating has always been revolutionary, but sometimes we are made to believe that it is frivolous.
Target of censorship
Censorship has returned culture to political debate. A bit sad, isn’t it?
Yes, it is sad that we are seeing censorship again. But beware, censorship never disappeared: there is Pablo Hassel, there is Valtonyc… People who are in jail. Twitter users, rappers… But now it has reached the programming, it is a political promise and the worst thing is that, on top of that, it gives votes.
Sánchez attends an act of the world of culture to defend “freedom of creation and expression” against Vox
Left-wing homosexual who sings in Asturian and messes with the ‘disgusting’. Do you see yourself as a direct target of censorship?
Yes, obviously, but we are all direct targets, even those who exercise it. They are like a meteorite that eliminates culture in general, which is not left-wing or homosexual. Culture is shared by all of us, those of the right and those of the left. Whoever believes that culture belongs to a part of the population is wrong. All cultural proposals, as long as they do not kill or humiliate anyone, enrich us all.
When did you discover the agitating properties of folklore?
From the beginning, since I started playing the tambourine and singing.
Is the problem with folklore that we have taken it too seriously?
Yes, it was like something to approach solemnly, like a ritual, like going to mass. Solemnity has nothing to do with folklore, which has parts that are pure inspiration and pure freshness. In folklore there is a lot of sex, a lot of politics and above all a lot of backlash and a lot of humor and whistling.
Knowing that is what unites you, Guitarricadelafuente, Tanxungueiras, Maiuca, Marala or even Vetusta Morla?
Yes, I think there is a common spirit with all these people who are approaching folklore in one way or another, a very heterogeneous group but with something in common. I don’t know why it has happened. We got to folklore and discovered that it was not as boring as they told us before.
coming off stage
What happens when the idol Rodrigo Cuevas gets off the stage and his platforms, takes off his garter belts and returns to the village where he lives?
I’m not a mythomaniac at all, so I like it better when I’m in town. Idolizing people is not right, it creates expectations that are not real. And I don’t like that artists promote this idolatry to get money, have more fame and have more work. That seems very perverse to me.
Can you imagine your village being like social media, where everyone loves you or hates you?
It’s a bit like that, I think. Not so exaggerated, because otherwise it would be unbearable.
By the way, in all the interviews (including this one) and articles about you it ends up pointing out that you live in a very small town, as if that were a heroism. It bothers?
Not that it bothers me, but it is true that a little does. I am surprised that people ask me how is my life there, how are my neighbors. I don’t know, it’s as if I lived in a cave or as if my neighbors were of another species. It’s true, I think my musical part is much more interesting than my life. Little repercussion had, for example, that he was going to make a record in Asturian with Visitante.
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