It would be very difficult to find a more suitable candidate than Carlos Vives (Santa Marta, Colombia, 1961) to represent the cultural ties that unite Spain and Latin America. That is why it is headlining the third edition of Hispanidad 2023, a celebration on October 12 that from last October 6th to next Sunday the 15th will offer 165 cultural activities in Madrid, including 86 concerts with artists from 16 countries.
Vives will open the concert on the 14th at Puerta de Alcalá with the presence of Ana Mena, Diego Torres, Niña Pastori, Rozalén and Carlos Baute, among others. “Do you know that the first Vives who arrived in Cartagena de Indias were from Sitges? And the Restrepo [their second surname] came from Asturias, which is the name of a small town. But look if they left descendants who today have parties in Colombia called the Restrepadas and Maaaarica, that pod fills a stadium!” he proudly recounts.
Carlos Vives, the first Latin artist to win a Grammy (today he has two plus another 15 Latin Grammys), has just been awarded an honorary doctorate in Social Sciences by the Universidad del Norte, in Barranquilla (Colombia), in recognition of his work in research into the roots of current Colombian music and the dissemination of the country’s global culture.
“Sometimes I think that the reason my life brought me to Spain was to understand a lot about myself and my land, to be able to have a message today: we must better value everything we are. On our continent, for different reasons, we have not felt proud of anything we are; We forget our African heritage, not to mention indigenous… And many years ago I understood it. Art has helped me understand Colombia, to see the difficulties in recognizing ourselves, the wars, the violence… Notice that if we aimed to have a minimum dream of a nation… We have also failed to have many excluded in society and That never allows for peace: a family with excluded members is always going to be a family with problems,” reflects Carlos Vives.
Music and studying the past to understand the present has reconciled him with his continent: “Art taught me to understand my surnames, what pre-Hispanic cultures gave us, what Africa brought and what it left all of this in our music, gastronomy, politics, literature… Understanding myself as a Colombian and understanding the problems we have for not recognizing ourselves.”
Carlos found happiness with the chemical engineer Claudia Elena Vásquez 20 years ago. “Something like this had to happen to me in my life. Life hit me very hard, she treated me very badly but since I met her, she has been a driving force for me. He took my career forward believing in me more than I did myself. We all deserve a Claudia. And I wish everyone to meet her Claudia. “You can’t tell him any dreams because the next day you’re on that plane.” The artist has two older children from his second wife and two more with Claudia, still in their teens. He has educated them all in the same way and he is sure that he will not find them twerking:
“When you reach adulthood, do what you want with your life, but you have to be careful with the message that is given to the youngest. I think about it as a father and as a 62-year-old person, I’m not a prude, it’s not that I don’t like sensuality, but there are things that I see sometimes that… I assure you that there are vulgar things that my friends will say no to because they have had a dad and a mom raising them. And it’s not about prohibiting things, but about what you read to them before bed and the music they grow up with.”
Given that the Puerta de Alcalá show is called ‘Carlos Vives and Friends’, it is obligatory to ask him about someone who was his intimate, Shakira, with whom he composed La Bicicleta. At the end of May, the like of the author of The Cold Drop to a photo of Gerard Piqué and Clara Chía on Instagram destroyed a decades-long relationship. “Not even Judas dared to do so,” roared the ‘shakifans’ on social media. It was at the end of May and although Vives removed the like and apologized by directing the imprudence to his community manager, his friendship with Shakira remains in the frozen section. “The truth is that the last time I spoke with her was when we were there because I live in the same building in Bogotá as the doctor who operated on her father. I haven’t heard from her for a long time. I don’t know how she’ll be, I think she’s fine,” he responds to the question about her new life in Miami.
As for Shakira’s reaction after the breakup with Gerard Piqué, that is, the successive songs attacking the former soccer player from all sides, she understands it but does not share it: “There is a current of empowerment of women, I see that they are encouraged more messages from artists in that current. But one comes from another school, from bolero, from romanticism… Never if my wife misses me, treats me badly, as happened to me in the past… I would be incapable of speaking badly about a woman. “We gentlemen lose our memories. You can be a gentleman and not be sexist.”
