In the middle of the meadows, between cider, bagpipes and tambourines, Rodrigo Cuevas has found the inspiration he has distilled in Manual de romería (Sony), the second album by the artist from Oviedo, which has collected the traditions of the Asturian mountain to reinterpret them wrapped in a mix of modern sounds and ancestral instruments. After tasting the honeys of tradition in Manual de cortejo , this time the daring multidisciplinary artist has forced himself to compose the album’s themes himself, which has resulted in a step further in terms of folklore to remove the patina of dust that covered it.
A work that was recognized on Monday with the 2023 National Contemporary Music Award, “for the uniqueness of the work, with a transcendent proposal that unites traditional folkloric music and contemporary popular music”, according to the jury’s decision. On October 18, tickets will go on sale for the upcoming concert in Barcelona as part of the Guitar Bcn 2024 festival.
More than a user guide, the pilgrimage manual “is some notes of the things I learned from the pilgrimages and which I think can be useful to others”, explains Rodrigo Cuevas, who is visiting Barcelona to promote the album in a city he knows well. He came here to study sonology, tired of the traditional methods offered by the Oviedo conservatory. After passing through the mountains of Pontevedra, he settled in Piloña, where he has rediscovered the happiness he enjoyed as a child, when he visited his grandmother in Rodiezmo. “In my grandmother’s town, I spent every weekend, summer, every holiday.”
The love for the land where he lives is reflected both in the ten tracks of the album and in the four cuts where he gives voice to the neighbors. They are four popular songs, a reflection of a culture that is at risk of disappearing because “people make plans that are so funny in their heads that in the end you stop doing what is everyday”. As a result, “pilgrimages and village festivals are running out of people”. Manual de romería is an exaltation of village festivals, pilgrimages, where everything happens, “where people really let themselves go, sing, dance, commit adultery, all kinds of things”. Nothing to do with the hieratic image of the traditional festivals of the past: “If they are smelly they are not pilgrimages; precisely, it is the place where all these strict rules would be relaxed”.
“I had the concept of the pilgrimage almost from the beginning, maybe it wasn’t so clear and I didn’t have the title, but everything was headed towards this idea that I didn’t know what to call”, and which was born around the “different sensations about how we live there, in the town, in Piloña, the savoir faire of Piloña”. Feelings that she then transfers to the live performers, where she feels like a star and goes down whenever she can to mix with the audience. “I would go down a lot more, but I can’t, because people can’t see me down there.”
Behind the mixing desk, there was Eduardo Cabra, ex Calle 13, who treasures 44 nominations and 28 awards at the Latin Grammys. “It has a very specific sound, it’s able to give a bit of a brutalist touch to electronics that I really like.”
The samples rule in topics such as Cómo Ye?! or Matinada (Resaca), with which, as it could not be in any other way, this particular pilgrimage concludes. “It’s another part of what I like to do and live”, says Cuevas about the use of electronics. “It seemed that he had renounced it because the Courtship Manual was very deep and not at all apetardao, then I thought that it was necessary to put this part of the pilgrimages here as well, since the revetlla at the end always ends a bit like this”.
In the Manual there is also space to remember school bullying with Dime, ramo verde. “I wanted to talk about it, because I can do it in the first person”, he comments, adding that “it is very important, it affects your life a lot afterwards”. That’s why, “since I was the lyricist, I thought of writing a song with all the things I would have liked to have been told back then. Maybe someone else can help her.”
To compose, Cuevas prefers the open air, accompanied by the guitar, despite the fact that, “since I don’t play very well”, when a chord doesn’t come out to him “I go to the piano”, an instrument he prefers to avoid, even though he masters it after passing through the conservatory. “It’s a can, because you have to be in front of it; on the other hand, with the guitar if it’s a good day you go outside, you’re with the notebook, you take it with you to I don’t know where”.
In fact, being locked up is not for him, which is why he is clear that, if he has to choose between living in the mountains or making a living from music, he is clear about it: “Living in the mountains, even if it was working as a something else”.
