Already 15 years old, Varry Brava is a simmering success story, conquering square after square, gaining the loyalty of her followers almost one by one, until becoming a reference in the national indie pop panorama with electronic connotations. Your next visit this Saturday September 28 During the El Patio Festival, organized by the Provincial Deputation of Seville, he promises to transform the headquarters of said institution into a great party in which respectable people will dance until they are exhausted.
“With Seville and Andalusia in general we always have a very direct link and a very good welcome, they always behave scandalously with us,” comments singer Óscar Ferrer. “We are neighbors and we identify a lot with this land. Also, my mother is Andalusian from Jaén and we have family in this city, in Huelva, Seville… In fact, she asked me if there was room for her in the van.
The territorial question has been a subject of debate within the group, although Ferrer is quick to point out that “it’s nothing serious.” But is Varry Brava from Orihuela or Murcia? The answer is simple: “We were born in Orihuela, but we had Murcia 30 kilometers away and we started going there. In addition to being bathed by the same waters of the Segura, in Murcia we took our first steps with the group, in Murcia they were the first places that opened their doors to us and the first media that spoke about us. We are from Orihuela on a personal level, but Varry Brava is a group from Murcia.
Sensitivity for art
The truth is that Ferrer and his companions feel the pride of belonging to a region which has shown a particular sensitivity to culture, which explains the Murcian effervescence in literary, musical, artistic matters… “In Murcia, the people like to be in the street and knowing what his neighbor is doing, he respects a lot if someone paints a picture or writes verses, or if someone goes out at parties to sing a Murcian jota. And art is inside homes.
In the musical spectrum specifically, they recall that the region saw the emergence of punk groups in the 80s like Farmacia de Guardia, rock proposals like M-Clan or Acequia, “less popular but great”, or milestones independent as Second. Varry Brava is part of this tradition, and they assure that it will continue because “the music continues to be supported, there are four or five warehouses of rehearsal spaces, and very attentive media, who do not want that someone comes from outside to tell the story.” . talent that there is on this earth.
Named after both soul idol Barry White and Italian singer Mina, the band have become synonymous with partying thanks to their powerful live shows, where they perform repertoire that is not intended to moralize anyone or change the world, but it makes the listener have a good time and feel an irrepressible desire to move. “I think that the fact that we don’t talk about our sorrows comes from the fact that we are three high school colleagues who have never told each other about them. I’m not saying it’s not good to do it from time to time, but it hasn’t been our thing, but rather having a good time, laughing, enjoying. And our songs are centered around that.
“We come from a more traditional time and place, where having a good time on your own terms wasn’t something widely shared,” they continue. “For us, the party is a way of telling everyone: these are our songs, free and without prejudice. This is our main ambition: to make good songs with good production and good live performances. »
Childhood sounds
Ferrer also doesn’t hide Varry Brava’s weakness for 80s culture. “It’s the music our brains grew up with, the songs that played while we drank the bottle, and as adults , they turn out to be sounds that remind us of you,” he says. “Then you educate yourself, read and discover great artists who expressed themselves and experimented without fear. All this, what we heard when we were 8 or 10 years old in our parents’ car, is our reference today.
Was it a time of greater creative freedom than today? “I don’t know, the currents have always been there,” replies Ferrer. “I think now there is access to more artists, there are a lot of people doing music because they want to succeed and try themselves out there. “Maybe the market dictates more than necessary, but I also think there are very demanding people, even though we seem to be a very affluent generation.”
Finally, Óscar Ferrer refers to the ecosystem of festivals that seems hegemonic in the Spanish music scene, and that Varry Brava certainly knows very well, even if they do not renounce small format spaces. “It’s true that, since the pandemic until today, things have changed. Our last venue tour was in 2018 or 2019, our album was released in 2020 and the pandemic brought it to a screeching halt. “We couldn’t play with such restrictive measures, so festivals gradually gained importance, and when several promoters and several brands came together, it became much more powerful.”
However, he announces that “even if the festivals are very good, we are going to do a theater tour after five years, we are already working on it. We come from there, we had to fight a lot to have an audience that supports us, and we hope that our return to school goes very well. What is clear is that we are going to reinvent ourselves, because we cannot offer a typical concert. We owe it to these people and we are going to offer them something else.
