Fon Romanian He has traveled the paths of music as if it were an expedition. From the meadows of massive pop as a member of Los Piratas to the experimental caverns with Suso Saiz. Now, she delivers new material with “Blanco” (Auto, 24), a conceptual work based on a work by the Mexican writer Octavio Paz and with which he rows against the current in styles and forms.
Before going into detail with the particularities of this album, we are going to lay the foundations: why did you decide to embark on a musical version of an experimental poem by Octavio Paz?
I found it more than anything. I lived in Mexico for five years and, among other things, I made music for theater, including some works by Octavio Paz. The set designer and director really liked the song and she told me why she didn’t compose more from her work. It was she who told me about “Blanco”. I read it and thought it was incredible. I set myself the challenge of composing the entire thing. It’s really just one poem, he didn’t divide it completely, but there are some different fonts in the poem itself and some separations, which are what I used to segment it into eleven songs.
What captivated you most about Octavio’s way of writing? What especially caught your attention about his work?
Octavio Paz has many facets, but, specifically, I was attracted to “Blanco” by all that connection he has with the deepest part of Hinduism, which he delved into especially when he was living in India. Furthermore, it is done in free verse, it has an erotic part… it is a very different poem from what he was doing, which is not so experimental. The concept of the poem itself is also striking, that you can modulate it, that there are different interpretations depending on how it is read.
You decide to adapt a daring and experimental work. What is the process and approach to translate it into musical coordinates?
He wanted the album to be recorded the way albums were recorded in the year in which he composed “Blanco,” which was 1966. Curiously, in that year they began recording the albums on eight tracks on tape. I bought a tape recorder and, of course, eight tracks in themselves are not enough. Sonically the album is quite simple and that is one of the reasons. We had to make it fit and, in addition, I wanted the music to not invade too much the message of the lyrics, so that is also why it is quite musically contained. Although harmonically it is very complex: there are not three chords, there is at least a lot of development.
So it is a premeditated decision that the music does not step on the lyrical message.
Yes. And the recording style, although it limited it quite a bit, also gives it a lot of character. Because it has an old sound. The process has been totally analog. The disk has not touched the computer. The vinyl is AAA: analog recording, analog mix and analog master, to tape. It is part of the concept.
Does the way it is published (a very careful edition limited to 300 units) also respond to this same reason? Is it about creating some kind of cultural artifact?
Sure, totally. “Blanco” was a work in itself as a physical poem. The album project includes a designer who has prepared the album art and the presentation video in direct relation to this content.
Everything that surrounds the album is markedly handmade. Today it is so unconventional that it seems like an act of protest.
It is totally going against the grain. We are finding that those who go in and see it tell us that on the one hand we are crazy and on the other that we are crazy doing this today. But projects have always been born this way for me. I came across it and, in my personal career, I have always mixed with other disciplines and what attracts me. I think that enriches the projects, not only musically, but also aesthetically and conceptually.
How are all these ideas and synergies translated live?
We are preparing it now. She also has the crumb of it. Octavio, before dying, left some guidelines to bring “Blanco” to the stage, applying some colors and shapes. So, the same designer who made the vinyl and the art of the album has prepared some visuals with this base to cover the live show. It would simply be performing the entire poem, with more instrumental parts to join the fragments. About fifty minutes of show.
A priori it seems like a proposal designed for auditoriums, rather than for halls.
Clear. We think about spaces that are not normal rooms, where you can sit, where there are projections and a context somewhat in line with the proposal. Museums, small theaters, cultural spaces in general. It fits better there.
And thinking about your career: how do you frame “Blanco” within it? In the end you have always been oscillating between the accessible and the experimental.
I like to move between the two worlds. Sometimes I mix them and other times I don’t. In my albums like Fon Román the two parts coexist, but the song is always ahead. I’m always jumping from one place to another. The poem on which it is based brings them. It is composed in free verse without a clear rhyme. It is a message with a very complex dialectic that has led me to have to think about how I develop it, how I create a song without it being boring. Avoiding what is usually done when transferring poems, which is almost reciting them with nothing more than two chords accompanying them in the background.
“I like to move between the two worlds, the accessible and the experimental”
And all this maintaining the essence of analog recording.
It is an important topic. It was a challenge to do it this way. It is an artisanal process that also takes time and in which today we do not stop too much. Now the tape is back in fashion. Because it has a physical component: other harmonics appear, the quality of the sound changes. Everything you generate with tape is very difficult to achieve on a computer. I bring people into the studio here and put the raw recording of the drums right on the tape and they go crazy. When the kids come to record, they hear it and they want that, they want that sound. Even if it is to later destroy it and create from it.