Until she was three years old, Mayte Martín (Barcelona, 58 years old) lived in the Poble Sec neighborhood, next to the penthouse without an elevator where today she offers licorice tea.
Her family moved to La Verneda, on the other side of the city.
“They gave my father a subsidized apartment,” she explains.
But she always wanted to return: “Because I have beautiful memories from here.”
At that time, in the seventies, two hypermarkets opened on the outskirts of Barcelona.
“We went from shopping at the neighborhood store to going by car to the Híper and Carrefour near the airport.”
She was 10 years old when she won a singing contest organized by Híper.
What I sing?
The first song I learned, the petenera, which is part of the most serious styles.
If the music didn't move me I wasn't interested.
I remain the same.
What moved her?
Flamenco because I heard it when I was little.
Valderrama.
Hearing my father sing, who had a similar tone.
Like many Andalusian immigrants, he came to Barcelona to make a living.
He worked at Olivetti, in an insurance company, in a bank... Here he met my mother, who was the daughter of a Murcian and Asturian father.
On their father's side they were all from Malaga, from Ardales, in the interior.
I inherited flamenco from him.
From my mother, learning how.
He explained everything: what he cooked, what he embroidered.
She's an only child?
I have two brothers, nine and eight years older, who began to work in the bank.
Why didn't they put you in the bank?
Because I was… like a lark.
I was me.
I wanted to sing.
My parents respected him.
They only said that a penny he had earned would not enter the house until he was of age.
They did very well.
When you charge for doing something you don't yet know how to do, you take shortcuts.
He knows he has to like it because he gets paid.
Stop growing.
Who took her to the Hyper?
My father.
A co-worker had told him.
I was the only one who sang flamenco.
I won a bike and a portable television.
Did they encourage her to sing afterwards?
No. We just sang.
On Sundays we went to my uncles' house.
And he, who had been a civil guard and was a two-meter tall closet... If you had seen how he cried while listening to La Niña de la Puebla.
That is my first memory of flamenco.
That big brute man crying.
At the age of 18 he made a living singing.
Yes. But contests do not measure the ability to reach people.
They measure technical or vocal ability, but not ability to move.
I'm not saying they have no value.
But I give it to meeting a person on the street who tells me that his father died and they played
Never Think About Death
at the funeral.
"Contests do not measure the ability to reach people. They measure the technical or vocal ability, but not the ability to move," says Martín.Caterina Barjau
At 18 did you have your own criteria?
I had it at seven.
It is not false humility.
I wanted people to experience what happened to my uncle when they listened to me.
He bought records at the Gloria market.
And he listened to everything.
If you don't, you can't form your own judgment.
In the flamenco clubs of Barcelona, Badalona or Santa Coloma I rubbed shoulders with other singers, people who needed to get in touch with their roots and their music.
“Flamenco is my origin, but not my yoke.”
Clear.
I don't like to experiment, I like to believe that I get to places.
I wouldn't sing anything I didn't think I could do minimally well.
I have too much respect for music, for the audience, for each genre... A genre is not a repertoire, it is a way of placing your voice, of feeling, of moving.
I made myself.
But I keep doing it.
Life, the people you meet, movies, what you read, everything makes you who you are and decides how you sing.
When I started, for me the important thing was to learn why a fandango was a fandango and why a soleá was different from a seguidilla.
I discovered that there were two types of flamenco.
The most lyrical and visceral.
And I started with the lyrical because it was what my family liked: Pepe Pinto, La Niña de la Puebla.
The one about the tear in my house could not be heard.
Who is a tearjerking singer?
The Agujetas is the prototype.
Or his daughter, Dolores Agujetas.
When you discover it you know what you were missing.
Is it more with your character?
Both things go with my character.
Fusion is absolute flamenco.
And the teacher is The Girl with the Combs.
I discovered it and thought: Holy shit, this was it.
She has it all: the faculties, the intelligence, the timbre, the vocal precision, the expression, a very wide range from the most heartbreaking to the most delicate.
It is reaching perfection to break it.
With all that self-knowledge, he titled his first album
Very Fragile.
It seems anything but fragile.
Being one thing and the opposite is the way to balance ourselves, right?
I am strong and stubborn.
If I want something, I want it in a certain way, and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong.
For better and worse it is a trait of my character.
But I did feel very fragile.
I hadn't recorded until I was 30 because I didn't feel ready.
There were people who presented me with blank checks because, in the nineties, flamenco was booming and record companies were interested.
But I knew I hadn't reached what I could do.
Have you always measured yourself against the best?
I do.
It's like writing and waiting to do it like Virginia Woolf.
Wasn't she afraid she wouldn't make it to the level?
I have always known that the first album would not be the same as the second nor the third the same as the fourth.
Each one summarizes a stage.
Of course there is an evolution.
But I needed to start from a minimum.
And until I recorded
Very Fragile
I was below that minimum.
There I put songs composed with no intention of singing them in public.
I fell in love and composed.
But they were for me.
And for the lady in question.
I was very afraid of not being up to par.
“We are only free in love and art.”
What limits you doesn't work.
"All my love songs are torn except one, 'Antes de ti', which is neither revenge nor pain, but mature love," says the Catalan singer. Caterina Barjau
She has had a reputation as a seductress.
I think so.
From Don Juan.
Have you had the same honesty in art as in love?
No. I have loved a lot, but I have lacked loving better.
What is it to love well?
Respect the other person.
I fell in love with two women and… I wanted it all.
Why not?
If each one of them felt unique...
Why not?
I missed the small detail of both of them knowing.
The mistake was not loving two people.
It was not giving them the opportunity to decide if they wanted to leave or stay.
But in youth there is a certain arrogance.
In the end, what was happening to me had nothing to do with them... I wish she had been as honest in love as she was in art.
Is loving self-limiting?
It shouldn't be.
Everything that is not disrespect must be accepted by those who love you.
The women I've been with I think have had the feeling that they haven't had me.
It's a mistake because you don't have anyone.
I need solitude.
And when you're young, it's not that you don't transmit what you need to be well, it's that you don't know yourself either.
“I can't understand how you can love two women at the same time and not be crazy.”
Well, I have sung that, but it is not mine.
Can you love without tearing?
I have been fueled by passion all my life.
For music, for women and for life itself.
Adrenalin.
Clear.
I feel free loving and singing.
Can you sing about love while celebrating?
Without dying?
All my love songs are heartbreaking, except one, 'Before you', which is neither revenge nor pain, but mature love.
“Before you, what we experienced was so small” from the album
Tempo rubato
in which she sings about her ex-partners.
What did they say?
They are all very smart and don't comment.
Do you now have a partner?
I'm alone.
And discovering how much time love has stolen from me.
Is there better dedication?
What I did was what I felt.
But the energy I dedicated to falling in love is incredible.
"Not everyone who goes on stage is an artist. He who knows that he is at the service of art is," says the Catalan. Caterina Barjau
As an artist he decided not to stay in flamenco.
Tete Montoliu told me that he had no interest in listening to me sing flamenco.
And that she was the best bolero player in the world.
How did you know him?
The first place where I worked was El Patio Andaluz.
When I was 18 I formed a group with a clapperman, a dancer... We did four shows.
The fourth one sang boleros.
And there were people who showed up at two in the morning to listen to that.
Foreigners began to arrive and we had to do rumbas and sevillanas.
I was not born to be demanded.
I left.
That has always been clear to him.
We are talking about art, not a job.
The fact is that one of the owners hired me for a room called Bolero.
I bought a tuxedo, my mom made me some bow ties and matching sashes, and I started singing.
When the contract ran out, the pianist gave me a card to L'Eixample, a jazz club in Barcelona where he played.
One day I found that card in a pocket and went.
And he, Joan, asked me to come on stage.
The owner, who is now 83 years old and is a friend of mine, sat in the front row.
And she hired me.
Tete Montoliu appeared there because he was her friend.
He didn't tell me anything and brought it.
I watched as he walked to the front row.
He was singing and thinking: “This can't be happening.”
After 15 minutes he came on stage and started playing.
It was an hour and a half.
Then he wanted to make an album with me.
And he had to wait for her.
Clear.
I have done things when I have seen the moment.
That's why when something like this happens, that's when I get paid.
I am aware that it is my reward for not being a commercial artist.
Love for art is not felt by all artists.
In reality, not everyone who goes on stage is an artist.
It is he who knows that he is at the service of art.
He who believes that art is at his service is not an artist.
You have to have a solid base to use when the muse doesn't arrive.
A concert always has to be good.
But... if the muse appears, it changes something in you, it makes you multiply.
Peter Gabriel
chose her to
sing at Womad
and included 'Navega sola' in a compilation of the music he likes the most.
Didn't she go to his head?
It has never gone up.
I am clear that this is a constant learning process.
I haven't felt like I was on the cusp of anything either.
But he has felt the support of the public.
He left the music industry and started
crowdfunding
to make his albums.
I decided that in my hunger I was in charge.
The managers and record labels disappointed me.
I knew it would be expensive to leave the market and the circuits, but... those in the recording industry are not interested in people who know what they want to do.
They are interested in people who do whatever it takes to make money.
It's an industry.
Clear.
But for me singing is not a business.
Of course, if I earn money I'm happy, but I want to earn it doing what I want, when I want, with whoever I want and without pressure.
Do you live on rent?
Yes. I have no material ambition.
I have ambition for time.
Even if they asked me to do 15 concerts a month, I swear to God I wouldn't do them.
I make three and I burst.
I don't save myself.
I sing every time as if I were going to die at that exact moment.
I don't understand this any other way.
Does everything do it like this?
Singing is like making love.
You don't sleep with someone and reserve energy to sleep again the next day.
Do you have a routine day?
When they start, the relationship ends.
And, of course, with two at the same time you don't have any routine.
Not tired.
What you have is the fear of being discovered.
And fear of hurting.
What destabilizes it?
The disloyalties.
Oh.
How do you explain it?
I don't know.
I'll talk to my psychologist about it.
Do you go regularly?
Everyone should be able to afford it.
It helps to get to know you better.
And to forgive you for what you have not known how to do better.
And to forgive what others have not known how to do better.
I am aware of my limitations.
And my capabilities.
And I want to be free.
That's very expensive.
There is nothing more expensive.
Applied to love, Chavela Vargas said it: the price of freedom is loneliness.
If you have a passion, it is easy for whoever you are with to feel in the background.
Have you always been clear about your sexuality?
Yes. Mothers know everything without you having to say anything.
At one point I talked about it with mine and that's it.
My father was more closed.
It wasn't so easy for him.
But in my mother I had a father, sister, friend and everything.
How long has it been since he died?
14 years.
He died the day I finished recording
Al Cantar a Manuel
[a tribute album to the poet Manuel Alcántara].
Never think about death.
Yes. It is different because it has that charge.
I will never make a record as beautiful as that in my life.
You have pain and you have to let the other person go.
That's why it's luminous.
Why did you decide to do it?
They asked me to use their poems to add lyrics to flamenco styles in a tribute.
I randomly opened his book and read: “My father took me by the hand and I studied jasmines second year.”
I fell in love.
His poetry reaches everyone.
It's not intellectual, it's true.
I spent months reading it, and when I finally picked up the guitar, I already had the music.
I didn't put it on him, I found it for him.
“Love teaches you what you didn't know about yourself.”
Wasn't she the psychologist?
Both.
Rather than reinventing yourself, you add.
And adding, will he ever sing pop?
I don't renounce what it means to be alive: to change, to add... Maybe.
There is a lot of
indie
that I like.
But I have had many moments of fear and uncertainty.
I've been swimming against the current since I started.
What is the art?
If you leave a movie or an exhibition the same as you entered, the art has not fulfilled its function.
When I was little I already liked hurtful things.
What he touches, what he slaps.
For me, art is one thing, and entertainment, another.
Each one should have their space.
Art is what makes you see differently.
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