Mayte Martín appears in the newsroom of La Vanguardia in a black suit and a challenging look, that of a person who in her 30-year career has known no borders other than the ink strokes in geography books. For her part, she has never done anything she didn’t like, nor has she sold her soft and resounding voice to burn stages or earn money, a virtue -sometimes perhaps an apostolate- that has removed the economic network with which many artists work, the same one that has caught so many stealing the freedom that the Barcelona singer uses to create shows like Tattoos, which will be seen on July 23 at the Grec festival (10 pm).
What will be seen in Tattoos?
It is a collection of the songs that have marked my life the most, that unite me with the whole world, with the whole public, fetish songs for everyone. I have wanted to find a common meeting point with the public as lovers of music, of the sensitivity of things that last. I didn’t want them to be my tattoos, but everyone’s tattoos.
They will be familiar topics
It means singing songs that I have never sung before, songs that have always been a part of my life and have seemed like wonderful works of art, but most of them I have never sung. It is a very beautiful, very special thing, to feel physically vibrate inside your mouth, inside your body, those phrases that you have heard sung by other authors and other singers and they have moved you.
Have you had help making the list?
It was not necessary, for everyone who loves music, who is sensitive and loves beauty, that is unquestionably a hit. Most people will tell you that Ne me quitte pas is the most beautiful love song ever written. The things that remain are chosen, which take their place by themselves through time, at least that’s how it was at the time of all these songs.
Will these songs be part of an album?
Of course, Tatuaje will be a record like all the others. When the work has been at a point like the one that picks the fruit from a tree, neither green nor past, at a point of maturity that is as perfect as I can offer. I don’t record albums to play gigs or to talk about me, for me the albums are the result of a vital moment, the result of something that I wanted to share with the public.
Will the recording be live?
Yes, many times yes, although later maybe I’ll put definitive voices. The important thing is emotion and I never sacrifice a single noise on the microphone, or a defect in I don’t know what, or a mistake in I don’t know how many.
A record can hardly match the live
A studio recording is better for some things and worse for others, it depends on each project, because maybe it was born more to be something recorded live or not. I have recorded the bolero concerts live, except for one record. You always have to value things, and put them on a scale. And you in your career you speak calmly because you have really done what you wanted all this time.
You have always done what you wanted
We all have that option, what happens is that a toll is paid that not everyone is willing to pay. but you have to see what is truly important in life for you. If the truly important thing in life for you is to have a big house, to be in Sarriá or to be free, do what you want and be honest with yourself and with your audience. I have never had the slightest doubt, I am not an ambitious person of anything material, I live just as happy when I have a lot as when I have little because nobody decides for me, nor how, nor when, nor what. But that has a price, of course, and you have to compensate.
And the vertigo?
The vertigo is had, for example, when going to crowdfunding to record records. It has a bad background, that a person like me has to go to collective financing, is a very clear indicator of how the yard is. But it is a very romantic thing that the people who like your music and who agree with your idiosyncrasy, with your philosophy of life and artistic, are very direct participants in making this work possible.
Do you have any limits in music?
You can never say if people are alive, we are constantly moving. The limit is always respect, the truth is, I will never have limitations in terms of musical genres because for me they don’t exist. If a musical genre is known, it is respected, you immerse yourself in it, you dive in and you get to know it enough to put the spoonful in there, go ahead, go ahead.
Effort is the key?
What cannot be done is to do things without respect, without knowledge of the facts. There is a word that scares me, which is to experiment, I don’t like to experiment and I have never done it in my fucking life and I don’t think I ever will. You can’t say I won’t drink this water, but I don’t think so, it goes against my way of seeing music. Music is something too serious, sacred, and sacred things are not experimented with.
What does Rosalia do you like?
Again!
How many times have you been asked?
Many, many. And you know what? I prefer not to talk about it, because there are so many beautiful and positive things to tell and say that I prefer not to talk about.
He says that in this country art is confused with entertainment
It is a very serious problem that we are having, culture as such is disappearing, and the new generations confuse art with leisure. They no longer know what it is, they don’t know, there is quality music and music to drink beers, and they cannot distinguish one from the other, there is no training.
Flamenco, which is its root, requires this learning
It is one thing to understand a genre and another thing to have good taste. My father understood the genre, but he didn’t have good taste. My mother didn’t understand the genre, but she had good taste. A person would appear on TV or on the radio, or when she accompanied me to the clubs where I was going to sing, and she would say “this one has something”. The fact that you are used to listening to a genre and know the musical keys does not imply that you have mastered it.
People believe that the genres are a repertoire, that the bolero or the tango are a series of songs that have remained there, but that is not the case. Genres are much more than a repertoire, they are a way of feeling things, they are a language, flamenco has its language, a way of projecting the voice, of phrasing it. It is not enough for a person to take a soleá and learn it and sing it. As it is not enough for Plácido Domingo to learn a tango and sing it; he is not singing a tango, he is singing lyrical and using a piece that belongs to another musical genre. I’m not saying that it’s right or wrong, I’m saying that the genre is much more than a repertoire, you have to know it, you have to understand it, you have to dive into it.
This has been clear since he began his career
I don’t remember at what age I started singing at home, but I do remember at what age I started earning money, getting paid to sing, and many years have passed since I opened my mouth for the first time until I got paid to do it. You cannot charge for doing something that you do not know how to do, in the same way that if you study a medical career you have to study the career and you have to really know everything there is to know, and secondly, you have to have some aptitudes to be a doctor. And in music too, music is study, I’m not talking about music theory, but about getting to know it, spending hours on it, getting to know a genre, getting into it.
Effort is the key?
You also have to have talent because otherwise anyone who spent hours listening to anything would become a singer, which is a bit what is happening, that now you learn four pieces of bullshit and you become a singer, and this is not the case. To be a musician, to create art, a series of requirements are needed, things that are no longer necessary today, anger is not required. I’m paying the toll I was talking about before because I want to pay it, because I didn’t come into the world to be a cocoon.
Is it not working well today?
Everyone searches, searches, searches, and searching nothing important is found, the important things find you. You can’t try to be original, it’s as if I were looking to measure six feet and go around wearing stilts, making a fool of myself. Each one has to have their own voice and contribute what they can, if they can. But people spend their lives looking to see who makes them fatter, who is more original, who does something that no one else has done before, even if it’s nonsense.
You grew up in a Barcelona where there was a lot of flamenco
I have never been aware of the outside, of the answer to anything, nor of the difficulties of anything, I have focused my energy and my passion on what I was passionate about, which was music. And that’s it. Of course, if the clubs continued to exist, another rooster would crow. I didn’t understand it very well at the time because my parents forbade me to earn money until I was of legal age. They supported me in everything and took me where I wanted, I sang where I wanted, when I wanted, what I wanted, but they prohibited me from charging until I was of legal age. At the time I didn’t understand the point of that, but later I did, because when you’re getting paid to do something, you’re forcing yourself to overcome something, to put yourself in a place where you haven’t arrived yet, to show that you know more than you know and to take shortcuts. It is not a path where you go up one step and then another, but you go up for the hell of twenty at once, because they are paying you to do something that you are supposed to know how to do. All those steps, all the steps that you have not climbed, you no longer pull back to climb them. You have missed all this and it is very important, it helps you to know what you have to say, what you have to say and how you have to do it, and it makes you have a solid journey with foundations, not starting the house on the roof.
When did you realize that your voice was different?
I don’t know if I ever said it about singing well, what I realized is that I needed to do it, I needed to sing. I think I’ve been quite objective with myself, and self-demanding. Keep in mind that I had been singing all my life but I recorded my first album when I was 29 years old. And at that time, when flamenco was booming in Catalonia, record company directors had put checks in front of me without the figure. But it is not the figure, nor the check, I am learning and I will continue until I start from a place that is worthy of being recorded. You have to do concerts because if you don’t, you won’t train, but leaving something on record that will survive you gave me a lot of respect. I was sick of bowling and touring, but I only made my first record when I thought I was starting from a ground zero worthy of outliving me.
Isn’t that a lot of pressure?
For me it is natural, the pressure would have been the opposite, if I had the check in front of me and I had accepted. But I have worked according to my logic, mine, which does not have to be anyone else’s. And so, wherever one arrives, it is always a success.
