SINGER (ENGLISH)

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Singer was born at siesta time, at a Belfast youth hostal where I crashed on a night of July 2013.

While resting in a room crammed with cots, my head kept bombarding me with the recurring thoughts that are the order of the day when one is about to reach the threshold of slumber. This time around, I just couldn´t get to sleep. Like so many other times, music was getting in the way of my dreams, causing me to daydream instead. Ideas and feelings combined in order to try to tell me something. And, gradually, I started to grasp what was going on.

My upbringing and my drive to make daily progress have recently made me attach great importance to my personality, which can always be improved.

I have learnt that the years, the experiences and the mistakes make us choose how we want to be, what we want to invest our time in and what we want to fight for. We relate to others and realize, whether we are right or wrong, who makes us happier in some respects or others. That way, we can decide how to build our little big circle of personal happiness, which keeps getting bigger.

Human values are significant within this circle, within the circle of “otherness”  and that of the whole wide world. There´s a wide array of concepts and each conveys a meaningful profound teaching, which are apparently easy to put into practice.

Music has always been a major part of my life. My parents have always tried to imbibe their children with such an important issue trying to get us to play instruments and enjoy singing. The latter is what I´ve always enjoyed the most and, evidently, I have always pursued it.

As a boy, I would sing in my mother´s choir and when I was a teenager; I actively developed what was turning out to be my passion into a Pop Rock combo made up of my brother, my cousin and two friends.

Years later, we single-handedly managed to make a record, go on a promotional tour, thus proving to ourselves that our drive enabled us to achieve goals which had seemed way above our means.

While on tour some time in December, 2012, an idea occurred to me in the shower: why not put together, in an innovative way, two ideas, human values and music. Sheer madness, which at first, appalled me. But the ball was already rolling and I couldn´t help but kick it.

We were scheduled to play in Madrid on January 20th, 2013 and in Barcelona on February 8th, as a part of our “Caminando Hacia Adelante” (Walking Forward) tour, named after our álbum “Caminando” (Walking).

Even though I had no long distance walking experience, I embarked on a challenge whereby I would walk from my hometown Guadalajara to Barcelona and give a concert on arrival, thus linking it to the name of our record and what I wanted to prove with my adventure.

19 days separated both concerts. If you split the approximate 400 miles of cross country between the two cities, I came to the conclusion that I had to do some 20 miles a day in the middle of winter to hit Barcelona on the day of the gig.

After convincing my relatives and with the help of some people, I tried to carry out the challenge in an unusual way.

#19DaysWalking started out on Monday, January 21st, 2013. It was an undertaking which, practically without resources, I tried to make audiovisual, filming myself as I went along, so as to share my experiences, editing on arrival after each stage the material on hand and upload each “episode”  the very next morning before setting out again. Such practice reduced my nights to four hours.

As I went along, I also would get my stories across on my mobile via the social networks. I would name each day after a human value, which was suggested through the networks so as to award those who defined or commented on it most remarkably. Loads of posts were uploaded, in which the participants reflected on values in an uncanny, natural guise about a long neglected topic. Such a thing propelled me.

19 values, plus 4 laid out before the onset, defined the undertaking in a wholesome manner. 23 concepts altogether, which I consider, alongside a host of others as cornerstones.

    So the tour was over and we came to an indefinite halt. Come the summertime, I packed up on a quest for new experiences, other cultures, a different language, diverse outlooks… I travelled to Manchester (UK), where I grabbed a flight to Belfast (Ulster) with views to crashing in a nearby village, called Portadown. Finally, I was headed for Sligo (Eire).

Between my second and third destination I had to sleep over in Belfast so as to hop on a Sligobound bus the very next day.

Siesta time in a Belfast youth hostal. July 2013

I figured I could put together a musical project in which I could express my thoughts and feelings anywhere without having to be backed by the industry, making my readers protagonists and conveying human ideals in two languages in order to be understood abroad.

It occurred to me I would do it through tunes complete with voice, instrumentation and percussion sung raw at first: voice, acoustic guitar and handclapping.

The guitar would back up the voice, which would take on the leader role, doing its thing and playing what were meant to be the “solos”, which here would be vocal and would have to be hummed or hollered on using utterances like “Na Na” or “Uo Oh” only to transform said parts in a final chorus, which would give away the message, after stanzas carrying the content we were trying to put through. Thanks to this “humming system”, the songs, at least, some of them could be sung without practically having been heard.

The disc would be distributed worldwide via digital platforms and susceptible to be streamed or downloaded on MP3 at singercantante.com It could also be purchased on WAV. Furthermore, a book would be written in which to personally delve, thus fostering understanding, reinforcement and the practice of these and other values.

There would be videoclips of all the songs in which to follow the lyrics, check the guitar chords and the rhythm of the handclaps. It should be borne in mind that since the song is recorded in its rawest form, it could easily be interpreted that way or harmonies could be added on any ole instrument and voice.

Gigs would start out anyplace where loudspeakers running on batteries could be found. Complete with guitar and voice, the music on the record could be reproduced, enabling our esteemed audience to identify, by singing along and helping the percussion with their own handclapping, thus becoming a member in their own right.

A project based on human beings and their qualities, an idea with which we could try to unite the world through positive vibrations and a melody. A plan created to prove that we are all musical and know how to be humane.