The jury of the National Prize for Current Music 2023 has proposed the granting of this award to Rodrigo Cuevas. This award, granted annually by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, It is endowed with 30,000 euros.

The jury has distinguished with this recognition to the artist “for the uniqueness of his work with a transcendent proposal that unites traditional folk music and contemporary popular music.”

The jury has also assessed that “his artistic project contributes a strong commitment to diversity” and have highlighted “the intensity of his live music and his extremely personal imagery.”

Rodrigo Cuevas (Oviedo 1985) is a multidisciplinary artist: singer, composer, accordionist and percussionist. He studied piano and tuba at the Oviedo Conservatory and Sonology at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC) in Barcelona.

Also interested in world music and the disciplines of cabaret and circus, his artistic revelation occurred during his stay in a small village in the interior of Galicia, where he came into contact with the purest traditional musicthanks to the local tambourine players.

In In 2012 he published his first solo album: ‘Yo soy la maga’, an album in which electronica and traditional music merged in a disco catharsis. Later she created the Dolorosa Compañía, a provocative psychedelic festival duo with which she traveled for three years until the premiere of her first solo show: Electrocuplé, with which she toured the Spanish underground.

He then created the Dolorosa Compañía, a provocative psychedelic festival duo with which he traveled for three years until the premiere of his first solo show: Electrocuplé, with which he toured the Spanish underground.

At the beginning of 2016 he published the EP ‘Prince of Verdiciu’, with the Aris Música label, which was the turning point in his career, going from performing in venues for ten people to a tour with more than 100 performances throughout the peninsula. A year later he publishes his third album, a new EP tribute to the Asturian artist Tino Casal.

His second show was ‘El Mundo Por Montera’. In 2018 he participated in La Verbena de la Paloma, directed by Maxi Rodríguez, within the framework of the Oviedo Zarzuela Season and wrote the music for the play ‘Sidra en Vena’. She is also part of the musical ‘Horror, the show that should never have been made’.

Subsequently, he presents his new show ‘Trópico de Covadonga’, conceived as a popular songbook’. In his album ‘Manual de Cortejo’, published in 2019 in collaboration with Raül Refree, he mixes Asturian rhythms and melodies with the muñeira and the habaneras, among other styles.

Awards received throughout his career

His awards include the Best World Music Album Award and Best Emerging Artist at the MIN Awards. That same year he also premiered his last show: Barbián, a cabaret zarzuela with which he was at the Teatro de la Zarzuela, at the Veranos de la Villa and, more recently, at the Prague Quadrennial of Scenography and Stage Space.

In 2021, the year in which receives the Critical Eye Awardalso founded the association La Benéfica de Piloña (Asturias), together with Sergi Martí and Nacho Somovilla, with the intention of creating a living arts center for cultural artistic expression, community action and the fight against abandonment and depopulation of rural areas.

Later, in 2022 it is recognized with the 2022 Rainbow Award from the Ministry of Equality. In September of that same year he released his third album, ‘Manual de Romería’, which was preceded by the premiere of the show, based on his latest album, La romería, which draws on the songs from the album, in which he uses Asturian and Spanish as vehicular languages.