Queralt Lahoz has flown in High Heaven to search for his feelings, and he must have liked the trip because he called the new show Everything Got Blue in which since mid-February he has performed alone on stage, his naked voice with the only company of a guitar to review his songbook in a different way, “a side of me that I have not yet shown.” Flamenco and bolero are enriched with electronic-based themes that will sound with other coordinates in the concert that she will hold this Thursday at the Paral·lel 62 room (9 p.m.) within the Mediolanum Mil·lenni festival. Club Vanguardia members have a 15% discount if they purchase the ticket through the Vanguardia Tickets website.
It all arose in the events that he performed as a duet, on piano and voice, a format that did not work for him, “I couldn’t find the connection that I have with Dani Felices.” So she tried the guitar with him at the Madrid book fair and the stars aligned for the artist from Santa Coloma de Gramenet, winner last year of the Music Move award, which had previously been achieved by artists such as Rosalía, Dua Lipa, Salvador Sobral. or Christine
Light of Luggage will perform what she considers the “most identifying” part of her songs with a selection that includes Tan Rico, De la Cueva or María la Molinera, accompanied by Limón no hay amores by Lola Flores, María la portuguesa, by Carlos Cano and At dawn, by Aute. After exploiting electronics in her latest works, Queralt wanted to “make a reminder that I am all things, the girl who comes from the roots and I transform it however I want, it is not usually done to make an electronic song thinking about it evolving.” to an Argentine tango like No me salves.”
Alto Cielo structures the concert in the same way that No Me Salves structures the Colomian’s latest work, a song helped her open a very personal door, “a toxic relationship to which she always returned” and from which she managed to get out thanks to music. “That person told me that he couldn’t come see me at the concerts because he would feel very insecure seeing how everyone was looking at me,” a comment that “made me not want to be with him anymore and dedicate myself fully to music.” , I realized I had to talk about it.” Emerging from the poem No te salves by Benedetti, the song refers to the figure of the savior, loaded with promises and apparently sincere advice, “that man who even seems like a father and tells you, you don’t know, calm down, I’ll help you.”
“I’ve been living off music for 10 years now,” explains Queralt Lahoz on the terrace of a bar in Gracia, surrounded by plants, the sky high, remembering his beginnings with the duo De la Carmela. “We were music workers, we sang at events, in restaurants, 30 euros plus reverse box office, it was possible because people came with cash.” Even then, he gave the roots, Mercedes Sosa, Silvio Rodríguez, Facundo Cabral, “boleros, some Morente songs, a little bit of everything.” That’s where Queralt comes from, a very Catalan name that has yet to release songs in this language. “The first song I recorded was in Catalan, later I also used it, but I wanted to start my career with that cultural thing of being a girl of Andalusian parents born in the suburbs, defending that origin that we have often rejected,” and she remembers that she herself has hidden her Andalusian accent on many occasions.
Although he is present on the Catalan scene with performances such as the recent Gaudí Awards, where he performed the Song of the Will-o’-the-Wisp by Manuel de Falla, Lahoz laments that in Catalonia “until you succeed they don’t value you,” which is why he sees that everyone world marches to Madrid. “It gives courage because they are doing a sifting, you are not part of the Catalan scene if you do not sing in Catalan, and for me the important thing is to be Catalan and defend yourself within this industry.”
“I have felt belittled for singing flamenco, for belonging to a suburban family,” hence the desire to bring out the roots of a music born and developed in Barcelona, ??where it has been influenced by other genres and cultures. And above all the need to remember in all her concerts the women in her family, “working class women, I wear that with pride.” From them she learned “that ours is not worth less because it takes us longer to arrive or because they want to listen to us. It doesn’t matter where you come from but what you say, your essence, mine has as much value as that of the son of someone who has great economic power and has known how to take advantage of it, you have to know how to appreciate the son of Vallvidrera and the son of Santa Coloma. Same time”.
