There is a current trend in Spanish pop music that consists of turning to traditional native music as raw material. One of the pioneers of this trend is Le Parody, the stage name of Sole Parody from Malaga, who has just released an album. Remedies It will be presented live in Madrid on October 23 and, three days later, in Granada, where it will share the bill with Califato ¾.
Sole Parody says that he is always inventing pseudonyms to tackle various creative projects. His second book, What America can (Varasek, 2016) he signed it as Billy E. Morreale, and for his musical career, which started 12 years ago, he chose to call himself Le Parody. His style is based on a mix of folk and contemporary, roots and technology. “It’s not something that was planned, it just emerged as I was making music. At that time I wondered why there was so much Anglo-Saxon influence in the music made in Spain, it was something that bothered me,” he explains.
Sole was born in Malaga and later lived in Granada while she was still very young. Therefore, when he began to investigate his roots, he found music that came from North Africa and Eastern Europe, with the connections between India and flamenco. “Then everything becomes very diluted. But basically it was about that, pulling from the roots and fusing it with pop music and electronic music.”
Remedies is the title of the fifth album signed by Le Parody. Again, the intention is the same, to place folklore in a new dimension while humanizing technology by impregnating it with ancestral sounds. But, according to its author, in this album there is a difference to highlight: “In my previous albums there was a very clear objective, which was the intention of reaching places where I had not reached before. Remedies It’s a more relaxed album in that sense. I wanted to make more pop songs, more accessible, and make them for pleasure, at my own pace, without searching for something new in a visceral way.”
Search is a key word in Sole Parody’s creative and vital lexicon. As we have already said, his first expressive vehicle was literature. The discs began to arrive from 2014, first Marry herthen Deep (2015), and in 2019, Future. The five years elapsed between the latter and Remedies He has spent them making music for films and dance shows. “People tell me that he had disappeared, but no, he was simply doing other things that, since they are not part of the pop world, seem like they don’t exist. I am a militant of living calmly, of creating at my own pace, of prioritizing life.”
Sole has also dedicated herself to raising her daughter, who is now three years old. He lives with her in a town in Ávila, after 20 years living in Madrid. In Remedies There is a song that talks about the city that was their home until not long ago, Lullabies from Mayrit. “This album is a continuous contrast between hope and chaos and these are some lullabies to calm a child and put them to sleep. Because Madrid has become, aesthetically and politically, a shitty place, an immense field of concrete where only cement is visible. But there are also very beautiful people doing incredible things there, fighting to make it a livable place. I have Andalusian roots, but I have lived more than half of my life in Madrid and that has an influence on my music and on me.”
Some of those beautiful people that Sole refers to also appear in Remedies. For example, Puttaneska, a female band that has been operating for just over a year. “They have only published a few songs, one of them is a jota… each one is from their father and mother. They belong to a super young generation that is bursting folklore in a very free way, they are the new waves of builders and destroyers of folk. And I wanted that to permeate the album as well.” Another specific collaboration is that of La Fanfarria Transfeminista from Madrid, who contribute their wind section to Sing for the sake of singing.
There is a super young generation that is bursting folklore in a free way
Remedies It is published at a time when the demand for roots is gaining more and more presence in pop music in our country. The popularity of Rodrigo Cuevas has served to shed more light on artists such as Bewis de la Rosa, Baiuca or Le Parody herself, who was one of the first to make folkloric roots collide with contemporary sounds. “Of course, this new context helps me a lot, because 12 years ago, when I published my first album, I didn’t feel as supported as I do now. The reviews said over and over again that mine was very strange, that it didn’t look like anything; Now I see that it fits into this kind of new trend. There has been a turn. People are no longer so interested in listening to a song in English because, even if they don’t understand what it says, it is very cool to do so. “Finally there is an audience that wants to hear other things.”
That intention has been perfectly captured on the cover of Remedieswhose image falls on a photograph by Abigail Algaba. A group of young people carry a portrait of Sole made by Carlos Baonza because the artist “wanted to appear on the cover without going out.” “I sent Abigail the bust of Carlos and what she did was take it away. raveset up a performance with him and took a photo inspired by the jump over the Rocío fence, an image of one of those crowds that you don’t know if they are going to worship something or attack it.”
According to its author, Remedies It is the soundtrack to play in the post-apocalypse, songs to play when there is nothing left of what we used to be. “This is my small contribution, but keeping in mind that everything has already gone to shit. I am convinced that all the crises we are experiencing bring total catastrophe. And when that happens, how are we going to live? Where? Well, I find myself immersed in that search now, what will we do when there is no longer a nucleus in which we recognize ourselves, when neither the macrocities nor the small towns that were previously empty and are now filled with people who do not understand them are no longer viable? . With this album I don’t bring solutions, but I bring remedies, which may or may not help you.”
As a white person, perhaps it is up to me to remain silent a little and look for other voices to give a voice to.
But despite that feeling that one does not know if it is pessimism trying to cross the border of optimism, this is an album that is made with joy, an emotion very present in their music. “In the previous albums there was something very baroque, very deep, very dark. Here I was in a new life phase and I said, ‘let’s let a little joy in.’ Happiness is the lighthouse of this album.”
An album where the roots are not only Spanish or Mediterranean. Kiko Dinucci’s co-production brings Brazilian air to the bases and humanizes the percussions. The arrangements by the Colombian Julián Mayorga, the trumpet by the Italian Ersilia Prosperi… “All of this makes the album have a strange Latin influence, because it is different from what reggaeton can have.” On this album, Sole also rethinks his combative stance. “I am trying to shift to a zone of action that is not discursive. I think that the possibility of changing things and making them improve is somewhere else and that is what I am looking for even though I don’t really know what it is. But as a white person, perhaps it is up to me to remain silent a little more and look for other voices to give a voice to.” The search, once again, is the driving force of Sole Parody’s music and life.
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