You will excuse my old comment, but if someone told me twenty years ago that I was going to interview a 24-year-old girl in a Fallas blouse who plays traditional Valencian music blended with electronics, I would have thought that someone was going crazy.
Tradition and modernity seemed irreconcilable worlds. But some time ago they ceased to be so in Valencian lands as well. Maria Bertomeu is The Maria. He attends me by zoom from a Fallas house in his town, Oliva (València), and the scandal of firecrackers that enlivens our chat is the same as if we were in the heart of Valencia. There is a reason we are only three days from the cremà.
It is worth facing that background noise when you have this Valencian music talent in front of you, a former student of children’s education and a professional conservatory specializing in Valencian singing, a viral phenomenon since his interpretation of “They pluck vines”, a traditional havanera from Alcàsser (Valencia), began to be disseminated by the RRSS at the end of 2021. She has made “The Assumption” (Propaganda Pel Fet, 2023), their first album, made up of songs inspired by the Valencian cant d’estil and traditional music motifs mixed with organic and electronic sounds, one of our most stimulating debuts in recent times.
How have you experienced the transition from being a YouTube phenomenon to already having your first album on the market?
I live it in a very happy way. It’s like I’ve acclimatized. Routine is not having routine. Go doing. And nourishing myself from the people around me, who are the ones who help me. Now I am devoting myself only to music.
You learned music at the conservatory and specialized in traditional Valencian cant. What attracted you?
I started in traditional music thanks to the fallas, because here in Oliva we sing albaes. It was when I began to like it and I began to scratch a bit more, and I discovered many things about traditional music that I had not seen, because normally all of these styles are worked on more in other areas, such as in the region of L’Horta de València or in that of Camp de Turia. That’s when I decided to enter the conservatory.
“When an artist always makes the same music, they can get bored, and that’s something very sad, that we don’t want to happen”
You have made versions of Ovidi Montllor, Lluís Llach, Extremoduro, Sílvia Pérez Cruz, Rihanna or Måneskin. Were some of your references?
Of everything, yes. I have always loved listening to music. My parents played all that music at home, which is not traditional. If I do a version of someone, it is because it has been a reference for me. As a person, as an artist or because of the music he makes. I have many references. Everything enriches, the truth.
The album begins and ends with two audios from your respective grandmothers. In the style of what Rosalía did in “G3 N15”, one of the songs from her latest album.
When Rosalía’s album came out I had already started, and it was like “ah, man!” (laughs). But hey, it was mainly because when I go to see my grandmothers at their house, they always tell stories, and I love listening to them. There are people who don’t, who think they are wandering, but I love it, and many times I put my phone to record when they tell me things about their lives. From when they picked oranges in the fields, from when they went to France, all of that is part of me. And I also use it to find out what the people of the villages did, and what music they made. I wanted to record them on this first album because I will always remember them and if I don’t do it now… on a second album I wouldn’t be able to.
Pep Gimeno Botifarra told me recently, in line with his latest album, Ja ve l’aire (2023), which is dedicated to the figure of women, that it was they who sang the most and who did the most to preserve all that tradition, and yet it is men who have later recorded. It’s paradoxical, isn’t it?
That has happened as in other areas of life. It is well known to all that women have always sewn, but later on the big catwalks, couturiers and designers were always the protagonists. Just like in the kitchen. Chefs have always had more impact than female chefs, when the woman is the one who has been in charge of the kitchen all her life. And the same thing happens here. It is true, and Botifarra explains it very well, that they were the ones who sang. But machismo has not only hurt women, but also men, because the man who used to sing was also accused of certain things. About his sexual orientation. And all this about his theoretical insensitivity, the “men don’t cry” thing, has done a lot of damage. Many did not want to be recorded singing. Now we have Jonatan and Christian Penalba, Xavi de Bétera, Botifarra, Hilari Alonso… people who no longer have any kind of shame in recording an entire album of traditional music as men. In my particular case, it is true that when I go to my grandparents’ house, he may be reading the newspaper and she is the one who usually sings in the kitchen, but hey, these are generations in which it is normal for them to continue to behave like this. We’ll see if we can achieve that in the future: that men can be working and singing at the same time. Whatever it is.
The album has been produced by Tono Hurtado (Tardor, Mai Mai, Sierra Leone). How did the contact come about and how was working with him?
It was very funny, because when the Neu al Carrer cooperative and the label, Propaganda Pel Fet, started looking for options, we all leaned towards traditional producers. But I told myself that I didn’t want to make a product like that. That we had to choose a producer who was the complete opposite, who had no idea of traditional music, because if we didn’t, we’d end up with something dandy, which is not what we want to do. It has been like an exact fusion, in the sense that I have given the record the folkloric part it needed and Tono (Hurtado) has given it the innovative part that it also required. It has been an incredible tandem, we could not have chosen better. When an artist always makes the same music, he can get bored, and that’s something very sad, that we don’t want to happen. Tono (Hurtado) was very active, because since it was a genre that he did not control, that he had never produced, and I did not control the electronic part either, it has been a very enjoyable and dynamic work. Because we have taught each other. That has been the key piece: finding many points in common despite being different. And give the record what we wanted, which was something new.
There are eight songs in just 19 minutes. Do you want to polish a product for those who don’t usually listen to long records (or directly or short ones)?
It has been a bit of a coincidence, because it is what I had. And if you have already framed the album and it has a story structured around these romances and chapters, it no longer makes any sense to add more songs just for a reason of duration. Let’s be honest, and say it’s short because we didn’t have any more songs. And that’s it. And because from “Arranquen vinyes” until we started recording it and finished doing it, it was this.
Do you feel in tune with other Valencian artists who mix tradition and modernity, like Sara Monfort, or do you feel on the sidelines?
There are people who tell me that my record has something of pop, another that tells me that it is something of rock, others that tell me that it is renewed folklore… yes, it is true that by using folklore and wanting to renew it and bring it closer to 2023, it is very It’s easy to be associated with Sandra (Monfort) or what she does with Selma Bruna and Clara Fiol in Marala. They add richness and creation to traditional music in 2023.
“Amodiño (Romanç 3: de ledicia)” is written in Galician. Why?
I was there for a year or so and, as with any place that has its own language and culture, its own traditional music, I felt like a second home there.
How did you come into contact with Propaganda Pel Fet and become part of the label?
I was surprised because it was Fèlix (Castells), my representative, who was looking for my live dates, he was the one who told me one day on the phone, when I was driving, that we could release the album with Propaganda Pel Fet. He told me before that he stopped the car, so he wouldn’t give me something (laughs). He made me very happy. They have contact with the seal. Neu al Carrer and Propaganda Pel Fet have a very close relationship.
How do you take the album live?
The premise is to have a good time on stage, that’s the first thing I said to Tono when we had our first coffee together. We got to work building the house backwards: what record do we want to make? And what direct can we have to exploit a disc of these characteristics and that it does not stay lame? What we did was first set up the live show, of which I am very proud, because it has been very powerful and is having a very good response from the public.
In what kind of venues do you think you will feel more comfortable? Festivals? Rooms? Theatres?
Well, I’ll be honest: I haven’t performed at any festival yet. The Feslloch, which is held in July, will be a touchstone, for example. I think it will be cool. We have high expectations. See what happens. I am very calm. But also because in an auditorium, which is where we usually play, it’s neither hot nor cold. You feel more protected. But the atmosphere of a festival also has to be amazing.
