Ode to the streets. Message and music

What is the message contained in Ojos de Brujo?

Ramón: It's a message of the streets. Flamenco isn't seen from professors' chairs or schools, but rather is the flamenco reaching neighborhoods, which is mimicked with more things that get there. We're not aiming to be a hip hop group either; however, it's in us. That's as far as form. As far as the message, what you live from day to day is what tells you... Marina can talk more about the contents.

	Marina la Canillas (Photo: Silvia Calado)

Marina: It doesn't matter if I say it because the lyrics in Ojos de Brujo are so closely tied in with the music... I hear something that Ramón is playing and it already tells me what that music is talking about. It happened to me with the two-guitar bulería. It was a question of listening to it and knowing clearly what those chords were talking to me about. They spoke to me of lost memories. All I had to do was start pulling out tonetes and develop them. Exactly the same thing happened with the zambra. From the first time we played it at home, I could see cartwheels and I could see roads. And when it's the other way around, it's the same thing. If it's a song that I've already written, it has a message...

Ramón: It has a hue.

Marina: The music is already there; you just have to look for it and develop it, since it already has those nuances. Ojos de Brujo has above all an everyday, street, natural and supernatural message because that's in the streets, it's in the people, it's all over the world. It's the only hope I see. It's obvious that the world is not doing so well. I think that anyone who watches the TV news... if we weren't so used to it, you'd break down and cry every time you watch it and of course, you couldn't have lunch at the same time. The natural and supernatural is what can help us as a group, as human beings, to take other better directions...

Ramón: Or at least to cope with it better.

Marina: We can choose not to contribute to what is degrading for the planet. It's a question of spreading awareness a little, but not the way with pamphlets or thinking that we have the absolute truth, but rather to simply have the freedom to express what you see, what affects you, what you feel. Many people are surely going to relate to that and they're going to say "geez, that's true". Then we all have to look for solutions together; nobody has a magic wand.

On the musical plane, what is the common point in that melting pot of genres?

	"The key is that the fusion is in every one of us; it's not a formula or seeking anything specific"

Ramón: I think that every genre has connections that can be seen. Between bulerías and funky music there is a connection in the rhythm, in how it is carried. There are certain pairs that go well together. Reggae and tangos is something that, without forcing it, gives you a road to follow. Sometimes you get an idea and you say, what about this? Something that seemed unthinkable at first... I remember that with the first tunes by Ojos de Brujo; the critics said that it was flamenco hip hop. Your hair stands up on end just from reading that; it seemed that was impossible and then, when you listen to it, you realize that it works musically.

Marina: It's nothing forced. The key is that the fusion is in every one of us; it's not a formula or seeking anything specific. It happens in someone like me who has always been a flamenquita, who has played the rumba in the park in my neighborhood, but I also liked hip hop, hard core, reggae... I have a lot of influences and so does Ramón. I think that our music is possible because we are possible.

Ramón: From the moment you relate to one type of music and another kind as well, in your head or in your heart you make that remake. I'm a gypsy and at home flamenco was very common and I was a complete flamenco addict. But when I came across the world of hip hop when I was fifteen, I hung up the guitar, started break dancing, set up my group, we went to the national championships in Spain... When you really like it, it soaks you up; you're already doing it in your head. I even remember that some people used to say I played very funky bulerías. When I started to create a flourish, the direction you're creating into enters a musical space with a series of common points you don't see when cold. All of us, wherever we come from, already have a little bit of Ojos de Brujo. When I met Marina it was far out because when I met her she was doing industrial soleá and I was at home working on industrial bases por soleá. It couldn't be true! Due to the fact that the flamenco is in you and besides that you like other things, you yourself make the concoction in your head. That uneasiness is what lets things come out naturally.

Labeling you is almost impossible...

Marina: Really hard.

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