A silky fabric covers the piano strings so that the notes rehearsed by the prodigious Sílvia Pérez Cruz (40 years old) sound smoother. When it ends, the lights go off and, in the darkness, the fabric becomes a magic carpet with which to take off and fly through a sky full of stars, musical notes and sensations still fresh with their latest album Toda la vida, un día. (Sony Music), and old memories where friends, admirers, achievements and challenges appear. Enrique Morente, Leonard Cohen, Chavela Vargas, Caetano Veloso.
Prolific and tireless, the bars of her penultimate album Farsa still resonate with the verses of Miguel Hernández: “All the mothers in the world hide their belly, they tremble…” A conversation at the rhythm of a waltz and on the surface with a woman who It is a botanical garden of sensitivity. Messy hair, lipstick, sweet voice and wise whispers. A Magazine meeting in which Pérez Cruz gives music to each word. And Àlex García, the photographer, portrays the artist with indescribable mastery.
What do you think when you remember Enrique Morente?
He is one of my great references. He and Caetano Veloso, because I feel they are very connected to the earth and because they are very brave, they continue looking for vertigo and they are not afraid of the unknown. The two cultivate that relationship with subsequent generations, with young people. They are two artists who seem like grandparents and young people at the same time,
What did you think when you decided to cover Morente, who had covered Cohen, and he had covered Lorca, in Little Viennese Waltz?
If I thought my version had to be better than the ones I’ve heard, I wouldn’t cover anyone. It’s not about doing better, but about feeling like something is going through you and that your voice wants to sing it. First comes the need and then learn to sing it. It is a song that asks a lot of you: there is a lot of poetry and nothing is left over, a lot of melody and nothing is left over and you have to know how to cook it over low heat.
Between success and being anonymous, where is the balance?
I have a lot of respect for what I do and what I did. I feel very free, sometimes I made mistakes, other times I tell myself that you could try something… but my life is about music. I would like to be singing until I am 90 years old in all the countries that I like and where there is a beautiful theater. The goal is not fame, but what I do and for someone to listen to me.
Now Cesárea Évora comes to mind…
Yes, I remember when I saw Chavela Vargas at the Palau… I want to connect with people, not hide in a rabbit hole, but fame is not the goal. Success is being creative and having a good team.
Critics have said: “When he sings, no one misses the purity of silence.” With silence do you have friendship, love?
It captivates me. My final year thesis was going to be about it. There is a brutal power when you sing and it appears. When you sing, you choose. If you shut up, no. And that is very powerful. Recording the album with Marco Mezquida in Japan, if there was a moment when you weren’t thinking, and you were relaxing, there was an almost liquid beat. In silence there are all possibilities.
Are there songs that you would like to tackle that you don’t dare to tackle at the moment?
Start doing purer things, because I look for the essence of language without forgetting myself. But I would like to go to Granada for a while and learn flamenco, in a cave. Maybe someday old music, which is different too…
There is a verse by Ana María Moix that you sing on the album Farsa and that says: “How false invulnerability is happiness.” And you hear it and it gets into your spine.
Yes, I think that there are moments when I look happy, that I am in the present, maybe it can be a few seconds, that’s what music has. Not always. You forget about the body, being without the anguish of the past or the future. Something timeless. All the Sílvias, everything immortal that you can be at that moment.
What do you think when you wake up? Do you dream?
Before I dreamed a lot. Every day I take my daughter to school. On the way there we talked more (laughs). I try to give what causes me pain the space it deserves, give more to what makes you happy. We must celebrate that we are alive.
Ricky Rubio, the basketball player, sometimes talks about that. He says never too high, never too low. When you are euphoric, don’t go overboard and when you are down, don’t sink either.
The extremes are very visible. Balance is knowledge, it is learning: I am very passionate and sensitive. You can be empathetic to a certain point, it’s that great Aristotelian theme that I love about dose. Something can heal or kill you depending on the amount.
It has a style, an elf, a line, but it explores. Are you afraid of repeating yourself?
No, I’m not afraid, but I am brave and lucid. Now I would say that looking back, I see a thread and at the same time I feel that something is going to change a lot and that I still don’t know what it is. I like the vertigo of learning.
Do you need solitude?
To compose, yes. Sometimes I’m in the car with my daughter and I’m driving and I vocalize half out loud to understand the structure. Being a mother, I don’t need ideal spaces to create. Composition is loneliness and interpretation can be too. It is very different being alone or with a band.
And on this album?
I wrote suddenly and sometimes I didn’t erase. When I sing I am another, I am me. There are many layers between the truth, your pain, that of others, the joys, it is exciting.
What things are you afraid of not coming back?
Some I thought would not come back and they come back. There are great friendships and loves that last a while. The other day I thought that I wish I died before my mother, but not because I want to die young, but because she inspires me a lot. The women in my life: my mother, my sister, my daughter.
When you look back and see your work…
I tell myself, did you really make November 11 with that fragility and sincerity? It survived time, it was a gold record… On the Granada album I see my unconscious part… How I saw it before and how I see it now.
