The first chords of ‘World Women’s Day’ start and the Cervantes Theatre in Malaga explodes. Packed to the rafters with fans of all ages, all enthusiastic fans, they overflow a theatre that, at times, seems about to overflow. … stage. But for Andres Calamarothe object of devotion of this excited crowd, everything had begun twenty-four hours before such a lavish display of affection and admiration.
The entire team, seventeen people who are almost a big family, arrived the day before to a Malaga that welcomed them with that overwhelming and insolent light, so characteristic of them, smelling of the sea and biznaga, with the pretty face of great occasions. A Málaga to stay and live in every corner, to walk it from top to bottom, to put a floor in it and shout “beautiful” at it. Sparkling and salty, all grace. That’s why the only one who will stay in his hotel room and will not leave until the sound check will be Calamaro. The rest do not give up the bubbling traffic of Larios Street, nor the vibrant terraces of Granada Street, nor some spits on Malagueta. But ‘El Salmon’ is in another situation: he needs calm and silence. Perhaps also that loneliness about which he has written so much, so recurring in his songs. Those that are already hymns of other lives that are not hers but are read in her, in 62 years of wild talent that cross, like a nerve and in soundtrack format, the biographies of three generations. “I am a medium-sized artist,” says Calamaro despite being Calamaro himself, “from the fifth of Loquillo, Robe, Ricardo Iorio, Jorge Ilegal, Robert Smith or Iron Maiden. The verses condemn me, I am one of the fifth who saw the 1978 World Cup. I ask her if this curious phenomenon also occurs in Latin America, seeing the older woman in the front row with her daughter and her granddaughter, jumping. The young man with his father, sharing and chanting (there is no generation gap in his concerts). «We have young and very young audiences, not all of them are nostalgic who come with their relatives. In Buenos Aires we are about to sell out 45,000 tickets for three shows, it is not too much in a city of millions of inhabitants but it is appreciated because concerts are more important there than Christmas and buying tickets is not entirely accessible or cheap either. “I don’t like to attract attention or be the center of so many eyes, but the job chose me: it’s worse to work.”
Calamaro will not leave his room (neither the center of attention nor stares) until the sound check. He needs his space. And that time, a cultured and restless guy, an inveterate reader, is largely spent reading. I know. The last novel of Juan Manuel de Prada‘A thousand eyes hide the night. The city without light’, for example. He comments that he is the ideal reader for this book. “I’m delighted,” he says enthusiastically. «De Prada signs the great contemporary novel, funny and exquisite, a bath of elegant humor, an opulent use of language and a historical reading that resonates in the present time with octogenarian relevance. It usually happens that I identify with the main characters of the books while I read, the Falangist dandy Fernando Navales is irresistible. He, rabidly free, without mincing words, does not hesitate to affirm that he identifies with a Falangist dandy. Unprejudicedly. Without any fear of misinterpretations because for him culture, culture with capital letters, is something else. “I believe that there are spaces where coexistence -beyond idealistic disputes- is possible,” he points out. «Likewise, the cultural battles are the harshest as moralistic brawls are recreated with too much emphasis towards a new cultural catechist ‘fanaticism’ with a lysergic axis of ideological appearance. There are plenty of reasons, this apparent barbarism is consolidated in virtual spaces or mercenary forums and is encouraging centuries-old, warmongering and cowardly concerns. Calamaro is not suspected of being lukewarm, precisely, nor of being a coward. Not even jumping the puddle to avoid stepping on it. There is bullfighting or progress.
Admirer of…
And given this scenario, I wonder, how are we doing as references? Declared admirer of Escohotado, by Sanchez Drago or Jesus Quinteroall of them deceased, all of them missed. What do we have left? I say. “We have De Prada, Andrés Amorós and Savater“, he tells me. And as a great reader of newspapers that he is, aware of current news, he is also clear about it: Alfonso Ussía, De Prada, Raul del Pozo, Vicente Zavala de la Serna, Federico Jiménez Losantos, Luis Ventoso, Quintano and Carlos Boyero. “Almost nothing,” they would say here, in Malaga.
The musicians arrive at the theater, occupying the stage and displaying on it the great themes of that ‘Brutal honesty‘ revisiting this tour: it’s the sound check. German Wiedemeron the piano, indicates Brian Figueroa He will be the one singing now. He, wearing shorts with the Rolling Stones logo and a beach hat, armed with his guitar and exuberant energy, was barely seven years old when the album was released, but it is as much his own as if he had been born. Julian Kenevsky with the other guitar, Andrés Litwin to the battery and Mariano Dominguezwith the bass, are also ready. The sound engineers and assistants move behind the scenes, dressed in strict black, like laborious synchronized bees, leaving nothing to chance. From the barren stalls it seems that what they are performing is some kind of ceremonial dance, perfectly orchestrated, calling for rain or good fortune. Everything is very measured, it is rigorous, but even so there is an atmosphere of confidence and good vibes: these guys are working, yes, but they are having a great time. At five ten, just when ‘Los Chicos’ is playing, Andrés Calamaro appears on stage. He has just arrived. He greets everyone and joins in the audition. In the blink of an eye, the order of the songs has been changed, one has been removed and another added, the list is remade and it is already new: the concert will open with ‘El día de la mujer mundial’ and will close with ‘Paloma’. When ‘Flaca’ comes on, they don’t know it yet, the audience will stand up and dance. The sound is perfect, they conclude. Calamaro returns to the solitary safety of his hotel room. The musicians do so later in a black van with tinted windows, escorted by Pepe and Marcelo (so helpful, so efficient). Kenevsky doesn’t remember if he had ever been to Malaga to play before, Wiedemer wants some mate but forgot to bring it, Domínguez offers to share his. Figueroa finishes a cigarette before going up to his room to rest. In just an hour and a half they will meet again at this exact point to get back into the van and return to the theatre. The show has to start.
ABC
At the agreed time, not a minute later, they come down one by one. Pepe and Marcelo are already waiting for them. Pepe also appears. Olga Castreno, perfect mix of angel and rotweiller, tireless in his defense and care of the artist, giving the latest instructions. It is difficult to trace Andrés Calamaro’s roadmap without the turning point, blessed coincidences, that is the advent, just 27 years ago, of the enthusiastic cyclone of curls and determination. It is also difficult to do it without his father figure, without that Don Eduardo Samuel Calamaro, lawyer, journalist and poet, very lucid intellectual, core in his being and in his being. And be careful with what is suck: «My father was the mentor of the family thanks to the unconditional strength of our mom. Former socialist, later founder of Arturo Frondizi’s developmental party, he practiced journalism directing the weekly ‘Que’ (it happened in seven days) and the supplement ‘Cultura y Nación’ in the newspaper ‘Clarín’. Male son of the Calamaro family in the diaspora, feminist and atheist, he practiced yoga and took care of the liver from irritating ingestions, he was a healthy homeopath and lived almost a hundred years. A conciliatory, conciliatory intellectual activist, surrounded by music and paintings, a triple reader, dynamic and patriotic. He raised us without television, in a clear consumerist austerity and among cultural accessories in music, gatherings, artists and conversation with diverse gentlemen from intellectual and political fields. Children of his father and grandchildren of his “almost invisible but influential” grandfather Jaime, we developed a mimetic versatility to navigate the world and time; We learned that there is not much more than “tolerance or authoritarianism”, that there are hundreds of tonal grays between black and white. “To be kind and generous.” Is it better understood now that Eduardo Samuel Calamaro’s son is who and what he is like? I believe so.
Pure Life
Brian Figueroa, wearing black cigarettes and a red jacket, pure life, leads the procession to the van. Kenevsky brings up the rear, lagging behind, watching the game between France and Poland on his tablet while Wiedemer laughs at the joke. At the door of the theatre the crowd is already gathering, waiting for them to arrive, hoping to see him. They go straight to the dressing rooms and will remain there until the concert begins at nine o’clock. The lights go out. The first chords of ‘World Women’s Day‘. The Cervantes Theatre, a murmur that had been almost silent until that moment, erupts. On its feet, Málaga: Calamaro has arrived here.
