Zahara is back on stage in Barcelona today, this time at Razzmatazz 1 (9:00 p.m.), where she will offer one of the concerts of this end of tour called Gracias, Puta, within the Banco Mediolanum Festival del Mil·lenni. La Vanguardia subscribers have a 15% discount on the price of tickets, if they buy them on the Vanguardia Tickets portal.
This final stage, transcendental in the musical career of the 39-year-old singer from Jaén, will be like a celebration in a more rocky tone, but also the most intimate and acoustic, surrounded by a large team on stage.
On the other end of the phone, the empowerment icon also explains that her five-year-old son wakes up early and has been at the bottom of the canyon since early morning.
Is it difficult for you to combine the artistic facet with that of being a mother?
It is very difficult, not only in my case but I imagine that of all people who want to reconcile family with money. I have loads of people who take care of my son when he works. And in my case, that I am divorced, I end up having a week in which I act as a mother and another as an artist.
The Barcelona concert is part of the Mil•lenni Festival. He usually repeats with them.
Yes, they must like my music because otherwise they wouldn't call me that much. And it's always been great because they've given me total freedom, I've been able to do what I wanted and they've respected all my ideas.
Last year he came with his group _juno.
Yes, _juno is my parallel project that I have with Martí Perarnau. It is a super nice project and the concert we gave was incredible. It's a very emotional project, and I remember that those days in Barcelona, doing promos, we ended up writing a lyric, which will be part of the next _juno album, which has to do with the nights we spent there.
These concerts, including the one in Barcelona, are the last of the tour. Balance?
With the album Puta another format came out called La Puta rave, which was born from electronic music but is closely linked to the record. And what we do at this end of the tour is say goodbye to the complete album in all its formats, electronic and also guitar and others. It will be a very extensive concert, very farewell to this moment. Unlike my colleagues who stop between albums to compose, next year I will do the _juno tour and some very specific concert called Zahara Rave, because we will completely separate ourselves from the album Puta to make a different repertoire, with some songs new compositions for that tour. Because throughout my career, in addition to playing with a band, I have created a format in which I go alone with the guitar, something very specific that the public already knows what it is. Well, with the Rave we wanted to do something similar.
What will you see and hear on stage?
We will be seven people starting with Martí Perarnau, who in addition to being the producer has the most electronic part... in fact we generate everything with our own machines; and ending with a couple of dancers. And it is that I am very interested in integrating dance into the show, and in this sense David Byrne is very important as a great source of inspiration for the way he integrates it. For me, physical expression is fundamental, because after all, that is also what I invite, liberation through emotions and the body. And I'm the first to put it into practice.
The album Puta came out in September 2021 and a year later he published Reputa. What has happened during that year?
Puta is an album that in my career and in my personal life has marked a before and after on many levels. It has allowed me to be honest with everyone, to tell a story that I had kept hidden for decades; aside, exploring a sound that he had been looking for and that had not finished exploding. It is also an album that has had a unique impact on my life at the level of connection with the public, appreciation by the press... I had never achieved it, and it may not be possible for me to achieve it again, which I don't care about either. It is born of a lot of embarrassment and a lot of pain, but in the end the album has given me a lot. Reputa, on the other hand, is a celebratory album. I was thinking of doing some remixes of some Puta songs but with Alizzz, who did one of the versions of the songs on the album, Berlin U5, we realized that those songs, even though they talked about me, about a dramatic and violent story, could be told in the voices of other artists, songs that will be transformed according to the style of whoever interprets it. That is to say, that they could have more life, and from there it is born. And we began to imagine María José Llergo, Carolina Durante, Rodrigo Cuevas or Marcel Bagés and David Soler… We have taken a lot of time from everyone and it has turned out great.
At the end of one of these concerts to say goodbye to this stage, what impression would you like to leave?
I don't usually think about it much. What I try is to always be as honest as possible. On stage I have a great time, and what I do perceive from people is that they connect with that truth, with that fun, with that emotion, and they end up feeling a bit of the same things that I do. But it's not deliberate because if I thought it would be a charge that would be chasing me.
And what truth do you want to convey?
That I love music above all things. If that reaches people, it is more than enough because music is one of the most wonderful, complete parts and the one that can cause us the most emotions that we have, the one that frees us the most. For this reason, when I go on stage I pretend to be like a music medium, that is, the goal for me is to be able to bring music to them in the same way that I feel it. Feel her like I feel her.
And her truth as an artist and a woman?
I look for the truth through my songs but in the end everyone has to interpret them. I tell what I feel, I am a woman who has suffered sexual abuse, who has suffered bullying at school, eating disorders and I have contained all this in an album through music that I consider to be liberating. I am a person who makes music and who, thanks to it, is alive. Literally.
He used the word Whore, then it sounded like Bitch… it seems like a fad.
It depends on who says them. We are in a moment, it is true, of taking a little ownership of the insult with which we have been attacked. In my case, turning that word around and using it as a shield has been very, very valuable. And that we have always been called whores when what we have done is be free, do what we wanted, or a bitch or a bitch, I think it provokes emotions and conversations in a positive sense when we are women who grasp those words.
Curiously, these are words that are booming at a time of great correctness, not only politically but also in the artistic field, don't you think?
That is largely due to the exposure we have, it is increasingly scary that not everyone loves you. So pop songs are emptied of content so that everyone can listen to them and they don't hurt: the speeches of famous people are also aseptic, white, neutral. But I also understand that there is a certain degree of protection for many artists from all walks of life who don't want to position themselves because it doesn't benefit them... and that's why on this stage it's cool that Rigoberta Bandini suddenly takes out her boobs and talks about this. We need discourses in art that lead us to reflect but I understand the other.
What are your musical references?
They change according to the stage. When I was little, the copleras, because she was a girl who was at home and saw my grandmother singing copla and I wanted to be Lola Flores. When I was a little more adult I wanted to be Joaquín Sabina, his lyrics inspired me a lot; When I was a teenager I loved Alanis Morisette, a woman who sang differently, rock, grunge and punk... And I think that I have less and less concrete references and they are more general: I saw Bon Iver at a concert and it was tremendous, but Beyoncé has brought out a Spectacular album and is my reference and is the artist who influences me the most today. I'll tell you something else tomorrow, sure.
