Rodrigo Cuevas (Oviedo, 1985) leaves no one indifferent. From a small Asturian village, he has created a personal sound that mixes folklore with cabaret or electro and reaches places like the WiZink Center in Madrid or Paris, where he will perform in 2025. This weekend, his Romería arrives at the MUWI festival in Logroño, where he will perform on Saturday. It will be the second time that the capital of La Rioja will dance its “waltz” and shout with “veleno” on the tongue. If the music is revolutionary, its lyrics are pure irony, criticism or relief. He is not afraid of political positions, in his lyrics or on social networks, and recognizes that for him it is natural, as is defending that people do not lose their identity threatened by depopulation.
La Romería returns to Logroño after presenting the album at Riojaforum in September. How has the show evolved?
Now we go with dancers, which is wonderful. They are four dancers called Las Perfectas, who as their name indicates are perfect and now the pilgrimage is even more of a party because there are dance groups. Saturday we are going to be at a party, people are going to be standing, it is going to be more of a pilgrimage.
Our folklore here is the jota. Will you dare to try it?
You have valets and you have many other things, don’t forget. Often, what is considered a heritage or a badge of the place only leaves aside many other things. You have valets, but you also have nanas, you surely have pasodobles, you have Colombians. There is a very powerful archive of traditional music from Rioja published on the Internet with free access and there is much more than jota. So I don’t know, but with something from Rioja, I’m sure I would dare.
We are not saviors of folklore, but it is wonderful if people listen to it through our projects.
Rodrigo Cuevas
There is a current movement to take these popular musics and songs and bring them into the present day, mixing them with other more electronic rhythms for example, making them mainstream.
More than bringing them to the present day, it is bringing them to our personal stage projects. We are not saviors of folklore or anything like that, we are artists who realize the aesthetic and artistic value of traditional music and we use it for our personal projects. As a result, the consequence is that there are more people listening to it, it is wonderful, it is very good, and also people playing the tambourine, singing, dancing, using folklore in their daily lives… But we are not saviors, quite the opposite, we come to enjoy a little folklore, which belongs to everyone.
Popular culture is often seen as something vulgar and uncultured. I think they are managing to change that.
One of the advantages of the scripts is that people listen to folklore and then can look for it. It is a dignity for all the work that those who came before us have done to value the intangible heritage that belongs to everyone, that is ours, and that at certain times has been ignored or has been focused in a way that was not attractive. people.
In your case, what made your music get there, what made you bet on the music you make?
The fascination I have with the beauty of folklore and the people who sing it, and all the history and knowledge that lies within it, as if nestled between the lines.
His music maintains the festive tone of popular music and uses it to convey powerful messages between mischief and a completely unique biting touch. Is this the key to involving the public?
Folklore has always done this, taking more innocent spaces like a dance and leaving messages with reluctance, double meaning. In a stifling society like the old rural societies, with a lot of social pressure from one to another, dance was the place to say a lot of things that could not be said elsewhere. So I also take advantage of this spirit to say things through songs.
Generating our own culture is what can prevent depopulation, otherwise we have urbanizations, not cities
Rodrigo Cuevas
Also, it greatly claims culture in rural areas. There is a lot of talk about building roads, bringing the Internet to cities, but culture is forgotten and does not arrive. Why is it so important that you do this?
I think the important thing is that it is also generated. In cities there is a lot of culture, a lot of popular culture, a lot of domestic culture, perhaps more than in cities. What perhaps does not reach as much is what is called high culture, there are no museums, there is no theater… It is important that there are both meanings, that this type of culture arrives, but that it is also generated. And this culture is a driving force for the dynamization of rural society itself. Culture should not come to us only because it is not transformative, but also in cities, what we must do is generate this culture, which is what gives us an identity, what makes us a people, what makes us a country. , culture is what makes us human. And we, our group of people, must generate it.
And in the case of cities, could it then be a weapon against depopulation?
Cities were the greatest generators of culture when they housed many people. When it stops generating, it is when it becomes depopulated, because if there are no people, and if there are no young people especially, who are the greatest consumers and producers of culture, cities find themselves empty of identity and attachment. Everything is like a wheel that feeds itself.
Is repopulation interesting? If there is no identity and a generation of one’s own culture and therefore an attachment, no. It is not interesting that we repopulate cities so that they become dormitory towns, like suburbs of people who each live at home with their independence and live their life in the city. The generation of one’s own culture from the city is what can avoid depopulation and help people who manage to join this culture and this identity. Otherwise, we have urbanizations, not cities.
Culture also serves to leave political messages. You position yourself openly while many other artists prefer to remain silent. Is what he does daring or is it natural?
I think it’s natural. Taking a stand is as political as not taking a stand, that’s what has to be clear. Because now there’s a lot of pressure on those who take a stand and not on those who don’t. And in the end, one thing is as political as the other. The natural thing would be to take a stand on certain things because artists are people who have a very great power to transform society. So we have to use it for good. We are the ones who explain ourselves as a society. Therefore, for me, it’s very important to take a stand because not doing so is much worse.
A line from one of his songs says: “A hangman kills a man and a bad tongue kills a world.” What is killing us as a society?
It kills us on the one hand, the people who want to go back on all the acquired rights and freedoms and, on the other hand, all those who do not take a position, precisely, all those who think that since it will not affect them, they will remain silent.
Finally, what are you working on now, how much is left for this pilgrimage journey and what can we expect next?
The pilgrimage is until April, the summer is long and hard but the tour is going very well. And then the next thing I don’t know will be, honestly. I have nothing yet that I can say.
