Concha Buika: "There is nothing younger, more 'sexy' and with more desire to live than a 50-year-old woman"

It arrives, bursting the seams of a mustard dress with one of those patterns that takes you to the African savannah, even though we are in the middle of the Castilian plateau on the hottest day of the year, and establishes an immediate complicity by finishing each sentence with a “ Mommy ”,“ baby ”or“ sister ”.

For years I had not heard from her more than very occasionally - despite the fact that, in 2019, Carlos Santana himself chose her to sing his great album

Africa Speaks

- after having been an artist of cover after cover three decades ago.

But here she is, back home from her supposed eclipse, ready to sing it and tell it all in this pre-post-pandemic summer.

Let's start where we left off.

How long.

Where had he been?

In Miami, where I have lived for a long time,

spinning

non-stop.

There have been years when I haven't been home for a month and a half.

Why haven't I found out?

I do not know.

When I visit my mother she tells me: "Oh, daughter, if you were very famous and now ...", and I tell her: "But, mother, I have come from doing a 200 bowling tour."

Spain is a lot on TV and what is not on TV does not exist.

Does it hurt not to be a prophet at home?

I neither care nor care.

I think it's great, nothing happens.

I have no need for approval, I am not a victim of that.

I approve of myself, which is already a lot.

Once you learn that, the rest will sweat you.

How long did it take to get that pass?

Many, many years, for all the internal and external voices that tell you that you are not worth it, or that you are worth less, because you did not study, or because you did not do this or that.

But, in reality, the loudspeaker of your oppressors is you and the dagger of the one who criticizes you is sharpened by you.

When you see that, rather than looking guilty, is facing the mirror, you begin to live calmly.

When did you really see yourself in that mirror?

Three years ago I was ruined for the second time and I became very insecure.

I felt old, fat, that I could no longer offer anything to music.

Until my son, seeing me like this, told me that his highest aspiration is to be calm.

And I said, fuck, this is a genius.

Forget about the rest, which is very beautiful and very good, but really, for us, who carry all that historical fatigue behind us, happiness is the tranquility of facing life as you want.

Why did you leave Spain?

I had a

jartura fit

.

You are the daughter of immigrants, you are not from one place or another.

In the neighborhood there are like seven magnifying glasses on you.

You are the shame of the family if you make a mistake and the pride of all Guineans if you do it right.

It is a very heavy weight.

And for me it is complicated, because I am a bit

lonely

and

crazy

, and I like to be on my ball.

Write about difficult women.

Why are you reputed to be yourself?

Because I'm not submissive, because I say no if I don't feel like it, because I don't feel obligated to anything and I don't need the approval of any man to do anything.

Women who know how to govern ourselves are called difficult, but I don't think I am.

Are you free by now?

No one is at all.

The key is to choose your executioners, not you.

We are condemned to slavery, we are dependent on air to breathe, on food, on someone touching us to feel alive.

But as soon as you start choosing what you want to depend on, things start to get lighter.

Freedom is being able to choose your chains.

15 years ago she confessed to being married

to a man and a woman at the same time.

Was he brave or suicidal?

Sincere

There have always been threesomes and even quartets, and more so in Spain, that we are very fuckers and revelers.

I just said it.

I am always in love.

Now a kid, my Santi, trombonist, more handsome and better ... He is 10 years younger and when my mother found out she said that what a shame.

Are you immune to jealousy?

I felt them once, and I don't want to feel them again in life.

How is that done?

Well, loving love more than person.

Falling in love more with what you live with her than with the person himself, who is a being as erratic as you.

It is a question of not fleeing from loneliness to love.

I am lucky that my partner understands that my first love is music and my audience, and after him, everything else.

Do you love music that much?

Of course.

We are soldiers, baby.

We chose our madness, it is not a disease.

When humanity is your boss, what the hell can your husband think?

What is the public to you?

Your life, your fridge, the safety of your child, a job, a destination, a why.

Does it seem little to you?

Only material things?

Make no mistake.

It makes me laugh when people say that they don't like to talk about money, but about things of the heart.

Voucher.

When you can't pay for electricity and your child studies with a candle, where do you suffer?

In the heart.

In other words, talking about money is talking about things of the heart.

Material things are achieved with the sweat of the head and the heart.

It is not like this?

Well there we are.

Where does he get that command of the word without having studied.

Because I have grown up with gypsies and that gives you a lot of mental agility.

It's a joke.

Or not so much.

My dad was a writer.

And I was fascinated with reading as a child.

It was the only world with which I could feel that life did not hurt so much, because I was small and my environment was harsh.

Very hard.

It pissed me off, it made me angry.

I didn't grow up in a neighborhood where you could dream of being a princess.

What was he dreaming of then?

With escaping away.

I would look out on the balcony and say, I'll never get out of here.

It was like a jail.

What was your file to run away?

My voice and my lack of fear of not having anyone's protection.

Is the voice your face or your cross?

My voice is my heaven and my hell.

Because it's not easy.

Sometimes it doesn't work out.

The idea of ​​what I want to sing is one, then the body is another, and what comes out is another.

But it is so beautiful when you see the rock excited.

Maybe if it had turned out the way I wanted, I wouldn't like it.

Music is a mystery and a miracle.

Does it excite itself?

A lot of.

I go into a trance, both in the studio and on stage.

Sometimes, I spend a week without showering, almost without eating, connected with myself and when I hear the result I feel strong.

Energetically it is very powerful.

It's very, very

crazy

, that's why I don't need drugs or anything, baby, except for my dick every now and then.

He declares himself "nomadic" in everything.

Also in sex?

Sure.

This is a one-way trip, sister.

We will never return.

So you have to enjoy the road.

I don't want to miss any party.

However, he has a legend of a wounded and tormented soul.

Yes, and it is curious.

Because I did not suffer.

Since I was a child I have felt very good about myself.

The ones who had problems with me were the others.

That's like a friend, who was harassed by a boss and she felt guilty.

I have never been harassed, because I have always been the boss and I have not harassed anyone.

But, just as nobody thinks of saying that my friend provoked the boss, I will not feel guilty for liking others or not.

Which is not to say that I don't have my scars.

I mean, it's like never before.

Nothing, mommy, I'm a

Sputnik

.

I'm

around the fifties

, in my fifties, so now

rock and roll

.

So far they have been rehearsals, now the party begins.

Well for some we are invisible.

That is the blindness of envy.

There is nothing younger,

sexier

, more eager to live and do things and more self-confident than a 50-year-old aunt. You have the big kids, you are liberated from everything, you don't need anyone.

The world is Yours.

If you looked old and fat three years ago, where is the change?

In the head and the heart.

There is everything, mommy.

'CAMALEONA'

The very personal voice of Concepción Balboa Buika (Mallorca, 49 years old), daughter of Guinean political exiles and raised in Palma's Chinatown, can with flamenco, jazz, tangos, boleros, whatever they throw at her. After his brilliant success two and three decades ago, years in which he came to sing the soundtrack of 'La piel que habito', by Pedro Almodóvar, he moved to Miami, where he resides and from where he tours Latin America and the United States. . Winner of a Latin Grammy in 2010 and nominated for another with Carlos Santana in 2020, on Saturday June 26 she opens, at the Singular Fest in Seville, her first summer tour of Spain since the pandemic began. Buika is back.