“I am achieving things that I never thought I would achieve in my life.” Luis Cortés, 22 years old, refers to being an artist, or more accurately to letting the rest of the world know that he is one. He is tall and strong. He dresses in baggy clothes and a t-shirt of the American rapper Pop Smoke, one of his current references. But he distances himself from the Yankee: he prefers the root. He is clear that he wants to take flamenco wherever he goes. “It is my hallmark and I have heard it from the cradle.” For now he is getting it. Almost a million people listen to him a month on Spotify and he has just released his first EP, Dolores. He is also preparing his first national tour that will pass through Madrid, Valencia, Murcia, Seville or Granada.
Luis Cortés has a gypsy mother and an African father. “I am a black gypsy,” he says. Although he considers himself more of a gypsy—his mother raised him—that mix also leads to his music. “Flamenco is always with me, but I love fusing styles,” he says. With Pop Smoke? “Clear. With any rapper from Los Angeles. I would love to,” she confesses. But she goes beyond what seems obvious: “I have Afroflamenco or flamenco songs with techno that will come out that are brutal.” For now, she shows her elf mixing it with soul, R&B or salsa. And although he attends ICON just after returning from Miami with a certain jet lag, He asks that more music be consumed from here: “You listen to Latin American music, which is really cool, but there are great people.”
The first to listen to and motivate Luis Cortés were his neighbors in Burjassot, in Valencia. Specifically, the 613 homes. He did not study music, but he was born with a good ear and the talent to know how to perform. “Now I am starting to train to evolve, but I have learned at home and in the squares with my friends,” he says. Without musical notion, how does he compose? “Maybe I’m at home, excuse me for the word, shitting, and I come up with a melody. Tarariroriro, tararirorá. And I say: how handsome. And I record it in a voice note.” Luis Cortés shows his mobile phone, with an endless stream of voice notes. “I have to clean up. Every day I record many of them. Look, this is from nothing ago.” And he plays the eight-second voice note between singing and humming. He continues to teach more. In the background cars sound, his neighbors walking or him running errands. “I get home, I write it well and the themes come out like that.” His thing is improvisation. More faith than technique.
That everydayness in his improvisation is something that makes him love being from the neighborhood. “The neighborhood makes you a stronger person. People outside are like: be careful with that one. They discriminate against you. That makes you stronger, but then the pillars and values that you learn in the neighborhood are unique.” He is clear about them: “Solidarity, empathy, respect and taking care of ourselves. I think it’s something you don’t learn in an urbanization in Madrid.” Are you still attached to the neighborhood? “Yes, man,” he responds quickly. “It’s a remove them. You start to earn money, to have fame or whatever and those in the neighborhood are going to continue talking to you the same way. They are happy for you, but they continue to waver you or they continue to make you be who you were and not become a freak out”.
There are those who glorify the problems of the neighborhoods. Violence, drugs or even poverty. “It’s stupid. Why are you going to brag that your neighborhood is bad, there are criminals and that they sell a lot of drugs? If what you want is good for your neighborhood, they should put trash cans, there should be facilities… Speak well about your neighborhood, you are a public figure and people will listen to you,” Cortés reprimands. As the only moment in the entire interview, his voice takes on a more serious tone, with a certain anger: “Try to get public aid, don’t create a worse image than the one people have in their heads. Maybe you want to be a gangsterbut probably the families in your neighborhood just want to improve.”
If Luis Cortés shows constant and unconditional love to anyone during his chat with ICON, it is his mother. “He married young and raised four children.” Her oldest is 25 years old and her youngest is 9. She prefers not to talk about her father, but she proudly claims Ana María Cortés, whose last name is “a very gypsy name.” . She “she is the most wonderful person in the world. She had a hard time, but she has never lacked us for anything. She is a mother who does ten times. She never drowned in a glass of water; If there were problems, she moved forward, she rationalized it and continued. She worked several jobs to support us. She is also a reference also on a musical level, she is the one who taught me flamenco when I was little.”
And of course, one of his great songs is Mother. “A feisty woman, she always pulled ahead of her / With four children on her back, a father was never needed,” Cortés sings. The song has gone viral on TikTok and the young man receives tons of messages on his account about it. “There have been mothers who have hugged me on the street… It’s amazing!” He says. “The song was going to be longer, about 10 minutes, but they advised me to shorten it. “The love I have for my mother is very great,” he continues excitedly. “There are many children without fathers, who I know can also relate. I am super happy and I don’t have that father figure,” he reflects. “To be told ‘thank you for your music’, when you express so much emotion, seems incredible to me. “It gives me goosebumps when I tell you,” he says, stroking his arm.
Is it a dream for him to be able to retire his mother? “I’ve already done it and it’s the biggest thing yet,” he quickly interrupts. “Now let him enjoy, let him travel, let him meet everyone he hasn’t been able to and let him be happy,” he says excitedly. And he points out that his mother is only 40 years old. “She has had a bad time, but she has her whole life ahead of her.” He is now in another stage. “I want you to never again have the worry in your head of: ‘Are we going to make it to the end of the month?’ I don’t need a car or a mansion, I just want my family to live in peace. If I can support my family with music, what more could I ask for?”
It’s not just his mother’s life that has been complicated. Yours too. “Complicated, but beautiful too,” she says. “When you are a child you don’t realize anything, but little by little you question why your mother is working all day.” “She had to go to work when I was young, 16 years old. I matured very quickly,” she reveals. She started working with her guys moving pallets “or whatever.” He adds that her mother “was angry, but I knew that the money was needed at home.” Shortly after, at 18, she got a full-time job in a warehouse. “I worked as much overtime as I could to bring home more money. I had a schedule from ten at night to eight in the morning,” she says.
He stayed like this for two and a half years. “Then I would get up at 10 or 11 in the morning to go to the studio to record. But damn, your brain doesn’t work if you sleep so little,” she laments. And he testifies to an anecdote that made him change her mentality: “With the song Hopefully, after a whole night without sleep between work and everything, I fell asleep when it came out. It made me very sad. There I knew that what I wanted was to make a living from music.” Luckily, as soon as he earned enough from his songs, he quit his job. “Everything happens for a reason. I had to live that and I don’t feel worse than anyone else. I think he has even instilled in me some values of fighting for what I want that I like to convey.” He confesses that now he wants to train his youngest brother, nine years old. “I’m excited to think that he has the opportunity to study whatever he wants, but I don’t want him to be capricious.”
Asked where he would like to see himself in a few years, he answers: “I would like to buy a car for my mother, who doesn’t have one.” No, but him. There he frowns, as if what he wants had never been a priority. “Holy shit, I don’t know, man. The truth is that I never think about what I want for myself.” There is a five-second silence while he reflects, looking at the ceiling, and ends up laughing. “I want to continue filling little hearts with my music and be able to help them be happy. May my music not expire in time.”
“Nor do I ask you to share it on the networks!” he adds. “Just let them listen to it, but really. I don’t want to do hits. “I want it to convey something or help them be happier in some way.” Anything else to add before finishing the interview? “Yeah. Put somewhere: I love you, mom.” Well here it is.
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