Many people decide to specialize in an artistic field that defines them for the rest of their career, but the truth is that Víctor Aparicio (Tui, 1958), also known as Víctor Coyote, has chosen to do everything during his long career. Steeped in music, art and literature, the artist has built a work that moves naturally between genres and formats.
Perhaps that is why it is not surprising that his latest work, If you lack streetbe a journey through songs, stories and images (a limited edition comic which can be purchased in the El Volcán online store). A journey that led to the traditional christmas concert of Víctor Coyote of 2024, which marked the presentation of this comic-street-single on December 18 in Madrid.
just published If you lack streetwhich defines as a comic-street-single. What does it consist of?
Due to work reasons, right now I don’t have material to make an album, so I have decided to release singles. If you lack street is one of them. Since releasing vinyl is very expensive and the CD has not yet returned as much as it is going to, it seemed like a good idea to release a comic that leads to a digital download of the single. People like it to be an original format.
Is music born as a result of drawings, or are drawings born inspired by music?
In this specific case, it is the drawings that are inspired by music. There are other times when I have an image in my head, not necessarily a drawing, and then it becomes a song. But the idea of the comic was to make some small stories that had to do with the meaning of the song without becoming illustrations of the lyrics. These are situations that do not appear in the song, but that could perfectly fit into its somewhat shabby slum environment.
If you lack street It includes many African influences. Why do you like to explore that musical style?
In my usual group, Los Coyotes, we started doing rockabilly [uno de los primeros subgéneros del rock and roll] with Latin, African, Caribbean, tropical influences… So it is an influence that has always been there. What I don’t do are songs that have to do with rock. Sometimes yes, but in general I take songs mixed with quite a few styles. I don’t want to imitate a Rosalía-style merengue, which is what everyone is doing now, like Karol G and all those people. I like to make things my own, take them to my field.
I must not think too much about the commercial or I must think wrongly because I have never had a big hit.
In other words, he does not think strictly commercially.
Yes, I think about what is strictly commercial, but I don’t focus on it. In fact, the music I make is not difficult or strange. It’s not music like that of the Residents or something completely atonal contemporary. So in that sense it is commercial, what happens is that many times it doesn’t work. I must not think too much about the commercial or I must think wrongly because I have never had a big hit.
The comic is a set of stories with a lot of irony. In times of greater pessimism in society, do we demand more humor, or do we have less desire to consume it?
Humor is always present in my art, but it is not a central thing. When doing something that reflects life, there has to be a little humor. And although we are in screwed times, there have been even more screwed ones. It is said a lot that everything is horrible, which is true because there are very serious problems like housing, but it is also said that before people went to work and in two years they had paid for a house, when I know people who have been able to buy a house based on not traveling. It is evident that youth work in Spain is terrible, but I have been in Madrid for a long time and, although now the apartments are more expensive because there is rampant tourism, they have always been very expensive.
Humor is always present in my art, but it is not a central thing. When doing something that reflects life, there has to be a little humor. And although we are in screwed times, there have been even more screwed ones
Victor Coyote
— Artist
What are you trying to denounce with these stories?
I do not intend to make a moral teaching of everything I tell. Right now there is a tendency for everything to have a moral, and not everything has to have one. My position is clear because I am talking about dodgy neighborhoods and, as with everything, that is already a political position, since I am not talking about posh environments, which seem less interesting to me. So there is already a moral position there. But I’m not trying to indoctrinate or say what is right and what is wrong, as is the trend now on both the left and the right. I only see it from an artistic point of view.
Although the expression You lack street It’s old, it’s making a comeback among young people. It is used when you say something that is obvious and that the other person should know.
There is a type of people who are claiming authenticity and who are saying that the best school is the street. I’m not a supporter of that either, but it is true that you have to have a street and you have to have the internet because, just as you have to learn necessary things on the street, there are a lot of things to learn on the internet and in books. Just as you find entertaining and funny content on social networks, there is also useful content, such as tutorials. What you have to do is that you don’t lack streets, that you don’t lack books, that you don’t lack Internet and that you don’t lack everything you want to have.
And you lack a street?
If I went to a bad neighborhood in Philadelphia, I would probably be short of a street. Or the same if I went to some dodgy neighborhood in Haiti. Because another thing that happens in Madrid is that the right talks a lot about insecurity, when here the insecurity is limited and at quite low levels. I don’t know if there is much more insecurity in Brazil or in Haiti, but the talk of insecurity in Madrid is said to scare people. Everything is relative. There can never be zero domestic accidents, zero illnesses, zero crime… But, comparing it with the crime levels of countries even in Europe, the level in Spain is quite low.
He has not only set music to illustrations or vice versa. Last year he was at the Thyssen giving plaid music. How did that come about?
I proposed that idea to them because at the Thyssen they had held events with people dressed for some exhibitions. I told them that it could be good to combine the two things: play and comment, relate certain paintings in the museum with certain songs of mine. It’s not about comparing my songs with those paintings, but it is a way to unite two worlds and link some artistic disciplines.
There has been a big resurgence in vinyl, what do you think?
It seems good to me, it’s a format that I like. Although prioritizing format over content is a first-world thing. I prefer to listen to a record that I like on the computer than to listen to a record that I don’t like on vinyl. Now you publish a comic or a book and people pick it up to say how good it smells. We agree that it smells good, but that’s not the important thing. A comic is not a perfume and a vinyl is not a sculpture. I prefer a book that tells me something on a tablet to a book that doesn’t tell me anything bound in leather.
Do you think it responds to the need to return to the tangible in an increasingly digitalized world?
It’s a possibility. When restaurants were invented, people didn’t think that there was no need to eat at home anymore. The same thing happens, for example, with cinema. A movie I watch at home doesn’t seem different to me than one I watch at the cinema, but sometimes I do feel like going to the movies. Each format has its advantages and, as long as you can enjoy them all, that’s it. What is interesting is what the art says, not in what format it says it.
And, taking advantage of the fact that Spotify Wrapped 2024 was released last week, what does it say about Spain that the most listened to artist of the year was Myke Towers, followed by Bad Bunny, Saiko, Quevedo…?
I am a big supporter of reggaeton. As an artist who has been making and reclaiming Latin music for a long time, I consider reggaeton to be the great triumph of Latin music over Anglo-Saxon music. Everyone says that the rhythm of reggaeton is hard, but the rhythm of rock is too. Something happens to me that also happens to me with rock or folk music: I like some people, and I don’t like other people.
Reggaeton is the great triumph of Latin music over Anglo-Saxon music. It is said that reggaeton has sexist lyrics, has rock not had them for centuries?
Victor Coyote
— Artist
Do you like Rosalía?
Yes, and he also seems like a great talent to me. Motomamifor example, is not an easy album to make, judging it from the conventions of the mainstream. In fact, the big hit of that album, Desperateis a song that was not in the standard version and is a textbook merengue. It is made with machines, digitally, but it is a very classic meringue. Rosalía is very talented and has things that are very, very good.
And who doesn’t like it?
Well, let’s say that Bad Bunny is not one of the ones I like the most, or I don’t like him much given how famous he is. I prefer Rosalía, Becky G… I like Quevedo too. So that later they say that young people have no culture… [risas]. Seriously, Quevedo is very good. The same thing happened to Rosalía: she hit it big with a song that, although in this case it’s techno, is in line with what she hit it on in the 90s or 2000s. Her song with Bizarrap is a blast.
However, although reggaeton is the most listened to genre in Spain, it is also the most underrated. Are there still prejudices towards what is popular?
Of course. On the part of my generation, and from the point of view of rock, reggaeton is completely reviled, which seems silly to me. It is even said that reggaeton has sexist lyrics, has rock not had them for centuries? And, furthermore, not all reggaeton has sexist lyrics. It is clear that every time something new comes out, people from previous generations will find it bad.
I prefer to listen to a record that I like on the computer than to listen to a record that I don’t like on vinyl. What is interesting is what the art says, not in what format it says it.
Victor Coyote
— Artist
On the other hand, in the literary field, comics are respected much more than before. What do you think it is due to?
Precisely because there was a time, in the late 90s and early 2000s, when the comic was called a graphic novel. He also agreed that a comic began to be made that was extensive in pages and quite autobiographical or self-referential. I remember that at that time the comic was very successful Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi on women in Iran. That contributed to women entering comics in a very direct way. Until then, comics were very much about men, very about superheroes and things like that, and luckily women came in, who read much more than us.
How do you want to continue telling stories?
What makes me happy about not having had a huge success in the 80s, when I started, is that I don’t feel obligated to make a repertoire that people brutally demand of me. I can play some old songs, but I tend to try new things. I like nostalgia only in the right measure. Life is a little like that. I am a canoeist, but I don’t enjoy training eight hours a day in a canoe. I prefer to do it from time to time.
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