She is a singer, actress, activist, presenter, communicator and yet, the definition with which she feels most comfortable is that of survivor. “Survivor in artistic precariousness,” she says to be more exact. The Spanish singer Rocío Saiz (Madrid, 32 years old) returns to Mexico to promote her new album Self-boycott and Rest (2023) and from there a concert tour will begin in various places in the country, Colombia and Argentina. This Thursday, November 30, he will perform at Casa Pepe, in the Historic Center at 9:00 p.m. Admission is free. Afterwards he will have concerts in San Cristóbal de las Casas (Chiapas), Querétaro and Puebla.
Saiz and her band’s songs talk about toxic relationships, being the owner of your life, sex with love and without love, work stress, mental health and the need, after all, to be well in a world that falls off the cliff. Their careful melodies and deep lyrics sing to an entire precarious generation that lives their 30s as if they were still 20.
She has had to produce her albums herself and survive with the proceeds raised during the summer. “Almost no one makes a living from music,” she reflects. “Most of us have five jobs to continue doing this.” Her new album is full of catchy rhythms, a very careful production and an aesthetic proposal that does not leave her indifferent. Despite all the difficulties she has had to make her way in the music industry, the artist is not for her and next year she will publish a book titled Don’t let it show, in which she will talk about her life experience as a lesbian woman.
Her speech in favor of diversity and her criticism of heteropatriarchy have made her become one of the LGBTIQ+ leaders with the most character and strength in Spain. Last June during the Pride festival in Murcia, the local police stopped one of his concerts for performing bare-chested, a performance that he has been doing for more than 10 years, and which, however, has now been censored with the arrival of the extreme right to several town councils in Spain. Her action was replicated weeks later by the singer Eva Amaral who claimed women’s freedom: “This is for Rocío. By Rigoberta. By Zahara. By Miren. By Bebe. For all of us. Because no one can take away the dignity of our nakedness,” she said before hundreds of bare-chested people.
Ask. How have you lived these months after what happened at the last Pride concert?
Answer. You have to stick your head in a hole and wait it out. When I go to play, I’m afraid that a guy will suddenly go crazy and throw a rock at me, for example. They have thrown stones at me, they have thrown ice at me, everything. I have had to run out the back door of clubs for taking off my shirt, but what can we expect when in Spain there are people serving sentences for posting a tweet. Actually I think we are regressing. They haven’t canceled me publicly, but they stopped calling me. I have been in places where they have asked me to please keep my shirt on and I have had to accept it because I have to eat.
Q. What did you feel when you saw Amaral supporting you and singing with his chest exposed?
R. For me it was incredible. Afterwards, he wrote to me and said: ‘I have never been so scared in my life’ because, of course, after that a horde of morons – and not fascists – arrived and attacked him. He had to close the networks. It’s also overwhelming to be told all the time ‘Oh, you’re the one with the tits’, well, what do you think of my music? What for me was a political weapon has become a total rejection.
Q. How important is the body in your shows and in his songs?
R. I have realized that if I put my body on it, it bothers them. So if it bothers you, I think I’m doing it right. When I show my chest I am saying that I want to live in freedom and those who take it as an insult have not understood anything. Getting naked and fighting for our rights is not going to reduce theirs.
Q. What will the public find in this new album? Self-boycott and Rest?
R. Well, a free therapy session. This is a project in which we allow ourselves to do whatever we want. During the live we start telling anecdotes, jokes, I ask the audience if they are okay because before being an artist I am also an audience. What I want is for you to enjoy and have fun. That’s why admission is free, because for me culture has to be accessible so that only a few can’t afford it.
Q. So you’re not going to get any compensation from this tour?
R. Yes. I am going to get an audience, friends, experience and make the project happen in a big way. I prefer people to come see me than sell tickets. I’m tired of this industry being dominated by men. For me the most important thing is not the musical quality, which is totally subjective, but that you remember what is happening. As La Fura dels Baus once said, theater has to generate something, even if it means vomiting. May you leave having an emotion, whatever it may be. That’s what I want for my concert.
The greatest catharsis for me would be if it suddenly happened like in Monte Verità, a sanatorium in Switzerland where people went in 1900 to be cured of depression, in the end they all ended up naked, they danced around the fire, they were vegan and everything was culture. I would love for someone to do whatever they want at my concert, something politically incorrect.
Q. What connection is there between your previous work, Bitter Love (2022) and the new songs from Self-boycott and Rest?
R. In Bitter Love You are in the hole and with this new album I give myself the opportunity to get out of the hole, to emerge successfully. It’s an album to cry while dancing – what I do best – or to put it in the car and travel with it and get over breakups, problems, deaths, everything.
Q. Why did you decide to use pop as a vehicle to create your music?
R. Because pop is a universal language and has many enemies, however many of its lyrics have a lot to do with rap or tango. They once told me that my music is for faggots, which I don’t find any problem with, on the other hand. But what happens, heterosexuals don’t like to dance? My melodies are Abba and Rocío Dúrcal with a keyboard. If you sing these songs in English they could be headlining, the problem is that in Spain they treat us terribly for making pop, that’s why we have to come to Latin America to be respected. We have to leave our country and reach places that take us seriously.
Q. What is the Latin American public like?
R. He is very respectful and thanks you for what you are doing.
Q. You will make your tour in Argentina a few weeks after the extreme right has won in the country, what do you think of this?
R. They have told us not to do anything on the 10th – when Milei takes office – and to be careful. We will be in Córdoba, Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata.
Q. What do you think about the fact that the extreme right is increasingly gaining greater political ground in Spain, Argentina, the US, Italy…?
R. I think they are true wizards at manipulating information. Obviously, if you have to choose between someone who annuls your rights and another who gives you more because he is telling you that he is going to give you money, that he is going to throw out all the immigrants who are taking your jobs… Let’s not forget that everything Fascist power is in propaganda, that’s where Hitler spent all his money and got voted. If we look at the past, we learn; but no one is looking at the past. The problem lies with the citizens. I’m not surprised that the extreme right elected in Argentina has emerged, honestly. Do you?
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