“The world was not made in two days,” Pedro Aznar intones in the title single of his latest album. Neither does his career. For more than 40 years, the musician and poet, former member of Serú Girán and winner of three Grammy Awards, has been moving “in search of the perfect song.” He runs after “an unattainable star,” and although he is aware that he may never find it, he did manage to discover “many precious stones” along the way. These findings are precisely what keep the Argentine artist motivated, who arrives this Friday in Barcelona as part of a tour that will visit several cities in Spain. “It is an old debt to my audience,” he reveals in an interview with La Vanguardia.
In his latest album, Aznar presents a somewhat atypical proposal for current times and moves away from the majority trend of artists who choose to release isolated singles before publishing a complete album. The World Was Not Made in Two Days contains 121 minutes of music with 20 songs arranged in two parts on the CD and vinyl version of the album. “I realized that I liked them a lot and I didn't want any song to be left out.” The lyrics were mostly composed during the confinement of 2020 and investigate current problems such as ecology and the way in which the human species has put its existence at risk through its own actions.
From collaborations with Roger Waters to Shakira and Soda Stereo, Pedro Aznar's music was always in constant motion. This year, after decades marked by rock, the musician decided to expand his repertoire and played with rap and reggaeton to recite lyrics like I'm not going to sing to your ass. “Urban music seemed to me to be a beautiful resource to say what I wanted to communicate,” says the musician and also highlights the poetic intensity and power that words have in this genre.
“When ideas are expressed poetically, people receive them not only with their heads, but with their hearts.” Pedro Aznar was one of the artists who musicalized the return of democracy in Argentina 40 years ago along with musicians such as Charly García, Luis Alberto Spinetta and Fito Páez. The country's current politics took a radical turn this Sunday with the election of the far-right Javier Milei as president, with 55.7% of the votes. “I understand the loss of patience with the political system of our times, which continues to be unable to provide solutions to many urgent things, but the problem is that when people start to feel this way, they turn towards authoritarianism and that is very dangerous.” In his campaign, Milei defended the organ market, the free carrying of weapons and related homosexuality to zoophilia; His vice president on election day minimized the tragedy of the 30,000 disappeared during the military dictatorship by comparing it to a children's program. “We have a democracy that we thought was already solid and today we realize again how fragile it is,” says Pedro Aznar. “You have to write what is new that corresponds to this moment, at the same time as having memory.”
The poet reveals that he has recently been experimenting with artificial intelligence. “I asked him to write song lyrics or poetry in the style of different authors and he did it quite well, but it is as if it were done by a human who still has a lot of literature to study and has little life lived.” Aznar recognizes that it is a fairly efficient tool for correcting texts or searching for information quickly, but for artistic creation, “it still falls short.” In the future, the musician imagines that advances will surely allow AI to compete on equal terms with humans. “The texts are going to be truly indistinguishable; At that moment we will have to think about what we do, right?”
After more than 30 years, Pedro Aznar returns to Barcelona to perform this Friday the 24th at the Teatre L'Aliança in Poblenou. The tour will continue through Valencia, Mallorca, Malaga and Madrid. An invitation to explore the history and legacy of one of the most acclaimed musicians in Latin America.
