Miguel Piranha, singer: “A pogo is a very beautiful ritual that brings people together” | Culture

Miguel Dandy Piranha (Mérida, ) waits in a bar in the center of Madrid sitting on a stool as if he were one of those neighborhood characters who take the last drink even if the world collapses. A fiery look, a welcoming smile and a fire of curls on his head characterize this frank and passionate musician, frontman from Derby Motoreta’s Burrito Kachimba, the ambassador band of kinkidelia, that extraordinary combination of rock, psychedelia and Andalusian quinqui vibe. A group that since 2019 has not stopped adding followers to the point of recently reaching number one in albums sold.

Ask. Rock above urban music and reggaeton.

Answer. There is hope. Everything they sell us that what happens in the digital world is so important is a lie. What happens on the Internet is not that important. People want to continue buying your vinyl and they want to continue going to see you live, touching each other and moving. Life makes its way and humanity wants to feel things and have them in their hands.

Q. What did you do when you heard the news?

R. The company had told me that perhaps we could enter the Top 5, but never reach number one. When it happened, I jumped. Me calling the family, my girlfriend… We were all exultant. We have been number one, displacing Shakira. She is nonsense. I think she hasn’t happened since Heroes of Silence. There had never been a blast like this with a rock band and guitars. We are excited to feel supported by an audience that is legion and not so much by the lists.

Q. Guitars are not for old people.

R. Not at all. We are not a rock band nor are we in that cliché. We have passages with synthesizers and we don’t close ourselves to anything. Nor do we feel moral superiority for reggaeton or any other style. A kid from a neighborhood in Colombia doing reggaeton and expressing what he feels seems as valid to me as any King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard album. As long as it comes from the heart and soul, everything goes.

Q. So, nothing about you being seen as the typical rock band…

R. What’s cool to us is that people fly like they fly at a Canela Party with King Gizzard or Ty Segall. We are very much part of the new wave of psychedelia out there. We feel like we participate in it worldwide. The paradigm of the machirulo of the Rock And Roll. The Derbys are lifelong colleagues who start playing in a place with cockroaches and that’s it. Just like Nirvana in the nineties.

Q. That audience, which is legion, also connects a lot with the band…

R. We have decided to start the tour in smaller rooms than we should have. Rooms of about 1,000 people. Fortunately, we have more audiences, but we have decided it because this way we have people close, sweating, being able to go down and play it. In Barcelona, ​​there were kids no older than 20 crying in the front row and their grandparents were at the back of the room. It is wonderful to bring generations together. Incredible things are already happening, like four or five guys correcting me with their hands when I made a mistake in a verse of the last song on the new album. They already knew it! And the song had only been out for a week. It’s a mystical thing.

Q. Why this mystique?

R. In recent years, musical artistic proposals have been greatly restricted. They want to do everything very restrained, very prepared for the festivals. We do something so deeply rooted and spiritual that it passes through the people.

Q. There are six members in the Derby. Do you also function as a band in decision-making?

R. Completely. We vote on all important decisions democratically. For example, this interview. Normally, we don’t do one with just one member, but since this format required it, we decided to vote. If the vote turns out differently, I wouldn’t be here. The band works because we are all friends, otherwise it would be unsustainable.

Q. You don’t see as many bands on stage anymore.

R. Well, I disagree. There are many bands but they have less impact. There are many with brutal talent. The Ponds are amazing. La Paloma the same. In Portugal, right now there is a psychedelia scene that is going crazy. And they are all bands that don’t want to have a pretty singer and that’s it. They make amazing music.

Q. But there are also more kids making music alone at home with their computers.

R. Yes, that’s true. It is what predominates in the more media part. I guess nothing happens either. It’s cool because this way the bands return to the place they should never have left: the garage with cockroaches. There is the truth. It’s cool to me that four or five kids from their town get together with all the enthusiasm to play and sound bad but they can one day become Laziness, Foo Fighters or Nirvana. Or in the Derby [risas].

Q. He was born in Mérida, but ended up in Seville. How was that change?

R. I didn’t feel much difference because the southern part of the peninsula, including Portugal, seems the same thing to me. On a cultural and spiritual level there is not much difference. If anything, the most important thing was that I arrived in Seville only thinking about music, about the possibility of devoting myself to it. I set foot in the city and bought a guitar and started growing my hair long.

Q. He also passed through Edinburgh before returning to Seville again.

R. There I became a professional musician. I made a living playing in all the pubs. I went with my cousin and we played acoustic. I got tougher.

Q. Any reference like frontman?

R. My musical education was with the big stars of the seventies. I looked a lot at Jim Morrison and Robert Plant. And I love Marc Bolan. They are people who, apart from singing very well, played at intelligent provocation. No shit. They said: ‘Now, you’re going to get horny with me, then you’re going to feel aggressive against the system, now you’re going to feel love…’. They were capable of everything. I have studied the direct of all of them. It’s been daylight more than once watching Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin live in Los Angeles. It comes from my soul to behave the way I behave on stage for them.

Q. Any more current?

R. My current reference is Rodrigo Cuevas, one of those guys who comes out once in a century. I have seen him and I have cried. He gives spectacular and sensitive performances. He is a genius and he kills me.

Q. What do you feel on stage?

R. The first time I got on one I knew I had to dedicate myself to this. Everything else was no longer worth it to me. It is indescribable. It is a feeling only comparable to falling in love. How to look the person you have fallen in love with in the eyes and have them respond to you. In my life I have never been nervous going on stage. I have done nothing but focus on it.

Q. What goes through your mind with the pogos that form at your concerts?

R. A pogo is a very beautiful ritual and unity of people. Philosophically it is something very important. It doesn’t matter gender, age, height… people are united. If you trip, there are five hands catching you and pulling you up. It is much less aggressive than it appears from the outside. Creating that feeling of unity in the people who come to see you is like going on stage: indescribable.

Q. There was a time when it became fashionable to play on stage almost looking at the ground, unlike you.

R. As an artistic proposal I respect it. J, from Los Planetas, is a wonderful frontman. In their own way. The note is going to make people listen to his lyrics, his wonderful nasal voice and that’s it. I respect him to the maximum. Obviously, my style is different. Firewood is cool to me. People like Rodrigo Cuevas or Rosalía.

Q. If the word kinkidelia had to enter a RAE dictionary, what would its definition be?

R. Kinkidelia is when you leave a concert, a kid comes to ask you for a lighter and, when he realizes it’s you, he starts crying. You give him a hug because he is a neighborhood kid like you are.