He started playing the piano at the age of eight., and at 37 she is a true folkloric diva. On September 24, 1985, Oviedo saw the birth of Rodrigo Cuevas and from a very young age he entered the world of music. He studied piano and tuba and later, at the School of Music of Catalonia (ESMUC), in Barcelona, he studied Sonology, although studying what he liked was not enough: he left everything and went to live in Galicia, first to Santiago de Compostela and, later, to a small village in Pontevedra, Barbeira, where learned Galician and began to forge his love for traditional music.
“The real revelation came when I went to live in a small village in the interior of Galiciawhere I came into contact with the purest traditional music thanks to my tambourine-playing neighbors”, he points out in his biography. And this music continues to form part of his idiosyncrasy, to the point of having become a strong defender of the idea that, in the musical, “the ancient and the modern are not at odds” Although I had this idea in my head long before, a proof of it is the recent phenomenon of the Tanxugueiras, who were about to represent Spain in the Eurovision Song Contest. “It’s very cool that there is a generation of young people with folkloric references. Folklore finally occupies spaces for leisure and fun,” he told Thais Villas in a recent interview. Why is folklore returning to life and culture? Rodrigo Cuevas is clear about it: “People are realizing how much fun it is.”
Rodrigo Cuevas’ first foray into the world of music was led by his partner Lúa Gándara, alias Jimena Fernández, with whom (and he under the pseudonym Fernando Jiménez) formed the musical duo La Dolorosa Compañía, a “psychedelic vervain duet” in which, according to statements collected by the Asturian newspaper ‘Nortes’, Cuevas discovered his love “for provocation, for the most shameless cabaret and for distribute pheromones among the public“. Lúa and Rodrigo arrived at the door of La Caja Negra, a mythical venue in Oviedo with a busy cultural agenda, to participate in the ‘antroxu’ (Asturian carnival) for a year dedicated to Cañí Spain.
“They appeared at the bar and asked me if they could perform. ‘What do you play?’ I asked them. And they told me: ‘A little bit of everything, copla, cuplé…'”. and there it began the relationship of the most folkloric Rodrigo Cuevas with La Caja Negra de Oviedo. But the story of Rodrigo Cuevas did not end here, it was almost where he began. In 2012 Cuevas recorded his first album, ‘Yo soy la maga’, a compendium of revised traditional Galician songs, the trigger for what was later his first solo show, ‘Electrocuplé’. This record was followed by another, four years later, with the song that brought him to stardom: ‘El ritmu de Verdiciu’, from the album ‘Prince of Verdicio’, fused the traditional Asturian song with the rhythm of Mystic, a Belgian group that played in all the discos in Spain in the nineties.
A year later, in 2017, dedicated an EP to Tino Casal, a key figure in the Madrid scene and considered one of the first ‘moderns’ in Spain. ‘Bewitched / Panic in Eden’ was the approach of a transgressive Asturian to another transgressor Asturian, with whom he approached “glam from the countryside” and wanted to cover “two of his most brilliant compositions” by him .
Two years later it was the turn of ‘Manual de Cortejo’, “a slow album, made without hasteto listen without haste, to live without haste”. In collaboration with Raül Refree, Cuevas takes a “journey through Asturian rhythms and melodies”, seasoned with other musical genres. ‘Manual de Cortejo’ (2019) mixes ‘xiringüelo’ , ‘muiñeiras’ and ‘habaneras’; unites “texts that speak of the past, the future, what is important and what is dispensable” and collects testimonies from women.
Rodrigo Cuevas and ‘La Tarabica’, a key figure in Asturias
On this record, Cuevas acknowledges the “strong inspiration” in ‘La Tarabica’, “a character from Cimavilla (Gijón), whose story, when told, narrates the history of Cimavilla throughout the 20th century and universalizes it.” ‘La Tarabica’, a woman whose real name was Fredesvinda Sánchez González, was a family of fishermen and fishermen, she was flirtatious and was a living memory of Cimavilla until he was 85, when he passed away (in 2013). Along with ‘La Tarabica’, Rodrigo Cuevas also dedicates part of his art to another of the great figures of the Cimavilla neighborhood of Gigón, Alberto Alonso Blanco , alias ‘Rambalin‘, personal friend of ‘La Tarabica’.
‘Rambalín’ was one of the few “declared” homosexuals in Gijón during the Franco era. Born in the late twenties, at night he would cross-dress to sing coplas in a neighborhood where, according to the historian Pilar Sánchez Vicente, author of ‘Mujeres errantes’, told ‘elDiario.es’, “what was not permitted was It was not allowed anywhere else.” The song that Rodrigo Cuevas dedicates to ‘Rambal’ also includes audio recordings of ‘Tarabica’ herself.
His latest album, ‘Manual de Romería’
‘Manual de Romería’ is his latest album, which is expected to be released in June, but the main ‘single’ is already known. hand in hand Mercedes Cabra, better known by her stage name iLe, Rodrigo Cuevas recently released ‘Más animal’, recorded in Puerto Rico in which he returns, in a more savage way, to unite that “old and modern” that is part of his claim. He is accompanied by iLe, who was the female voice of the now-defunct group Calle 13, sharing the stage with her half-brother, René Pérez Joglar, better known as Residente.
Tradition is a way of expression common to all human beings
His career has led him to be crowned in recent years as great of tradition and diva of Spanish folklore. He has received numerous awards —the Camaretá for his ‘Rambalín’, the awards for revelation artist and best fusion album and world music from the MIN Awards in 2020, the RNE Ojo Crítico Award for modern music in 2021 and the Arcoíris Award from the Ministry of Equality in 2022—, he has collaborated with many other artists and has been able to take his modern tradition to different parts of the world, from nearby France or Portugal to the farthest United Arab Emirates or the United States.
Rodrigo Cuevas, patron of the towns
From his experiences in Galicia and Asturias he was born his love for the people, to the point that he currently resides in a small village in Asturias that today has 15 inhabitants. One of the things that has made it easier for him to live in emptied Spain is, of course, the development of his musical career. Cuevas considers the city a “surly” and “expensive” place and in which “you have to survive so many things”: “I would never have been able to develop my career because I would be worried about paying the rent“, he explains in an interview in El Intermedio.
Precisely about the emptied Spain spoke also in another interview with ‘Ethic’, in which he assured that the solution to this problem “is quite difficult” and, probably, “we are not prepared” for that solution. “There is a story that is not talked about much but that will have to be put on the table at some point: We do not need to have more children, nor boost the birth rate. In this world we begin to be at the limit in terms of the number of human beings. The solution is in immigration, but we are not prepared for it,” he pointed out.
Rodrigo Cuevas presents himself as a folkloric agitator, ‘sex symbol’ of zarzuela and cabaret, champion of copla, spearhead of electrocuplé and total artist, with great love for “traditional song” and its mixture with other genres, the conversation of electronic music with humor, sensuality and social criticism. Rodrigo Cuevas is multifaceted, multisound and multisensory. Rodrigo Cuevas is, in the words of Jordi Évole, “our Freddie Mercury, our Gloria Fuertes, our Dylan and Mocedades”. “He’s a star and we’re lucky he exists.”
Source: Lasexta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
