Clara Peya: "I know I'm doing myself a major boycott, but I can't do it any other way"

Barcelona"It doesn't seem like it, but it's a risky album, for its rawness and simplicity," says Clara Peya (Palafrugell, 1986) about the album Nuca (Hidden Tracks, 2026). Above all, it is a very exciting album, with an admirable poetic tone in both Catalan and Spanish that is born from the awareness of loneliness, and musically very rich and full of interesting things, the presentation tour of which begins at the Accents Festival in Reus on April 24th. As with Corsé (2024), the pianist from Empordà shares each song with a different singer, including Mar Pujol, Anna Andreu, Xarim Aresté, Ahmed Eid, Henrio, and Judit Neddermann. Committed to music to the utmost consequences, she has decided that she will not publish her music on Spotify.

You are very generous with all the people who collaborate on this album, you have gotten very close to the stylistic characteristics of each collaborator.

— Ultimately, my not singing is an act of generosity that has made my life. I want the person who comes to sing to do so from their deepest place, and I try to get closer to their world so that it shines. Because it's not about me imposing my criteria above all else, but about doing it together and understanding that for it to reach people, it must be done with the most authentic part of each person. Therefore, I don't know if it's an act of generosity or an act of interest.

There are cases like that of the Argentine singer Juan Quintero, who is perfectly recognized in 100 vidas, but it happens with everyone. Anna Andreu is especially exciting in La pedra i el camí, Mar Pujol in Hi ha un moment que som immenses...

— Anna Andreu sings from a very beautiful place. Regarding 100 vidas, when I made it I thought only Juan could sing it, because you have to be of a certain age to sing these words and because he is very, very moving.

Are all the lyrics yours or have you worked on any with singers?

— They are all mine, except for Ahmed's part in Arabic in Porvernir, because I don't speak Arabic. The only person who changed two verses for me was Anna Andreu, and I let her do it because I love her lyrics. In general, what ends up happening is that there are people who I really like how they sing and people who I really like how they write, and I call each person for something different. For example, when I did the collaboration with Ferran Palau on the previous album: Ferran is not the best singer in Barcelona, but he has the ability to fill every lyric with meaning, he has an art of saying things, and for me that can be much more powerful than someone who sings very, very well. And Las voces, which Alan da Silva sings in the end, I made it thinking of Robe, but when I told him he was already very ill.

Nuca is an album made by someone who no longer has any need to make a breakthrough, neither musically nor lyrically.

— It's just that I'm at a point in my life where ripping things apart doesn't do me any good anymore. My songs, in general, ask for very little, and I've tried not to put anything more into them than the song needs. Now music is all so programmed, so plastic, so full of things, everyone goes to a concert and it sounds exactly like the record because the singer is singing over their own voice that they've recorded four times... There's an effect that multiplies them, an outfit that hides them, a choreography that... It all has to do with the moment we're living in, but it doesn't help the moment we're living in either. Social media is doing terrible damage, because it's turning deep life into flat life. It turns everything that happens into anxiety. And I think that right now, real music is very necessary.

Could this be noticeable in your playing now? The album has more melodic lines than other albums. I don't know if it's also an influence from your work on soundtracks.

— I think it all goes hand in hand. The small and cared-for thing is more important than the big and neglected thing. I come from an internal disorder that can surely also be seen in the way I play and that I don't see as a bad thing because I could also get some very genuine moments of creativity from it, but at the same time it wasn't very perfect. And now there's a moment when I know I know very well the place the piano occupies in my songs. I know it's structural and fundamental for the type of sound, but not for the quantity. Many times the piano will stand out more if it plays a melody than if it's playing strong chords.

It's quite French, what you're saying. Satie, Ravel, Debussy are good references.

— Yes, totally. But also Bach with the choice of voices and minimalism. I think Nuca is a simple album, but it is not a simplistic album.

It feels like the album is like a prayer that isn't desperate, but it does ask for urgent solutions. I think of verses like "Tell me, how do you breathe underwater", in The stone and the path.

— It's an unconscious thing because I always think it will be darker than it turns out to be. Always, always. Now that we're putting together the live show, the same thing happens to me. I think: are people going to come to cut their veins? It's true that there are some really sad verses, but accompanied by other things. That's why it's important to listen to the albums in their entirety, to be able to contextualize and understand the will of the people who made them.

This is why you make the last song La nuca, which is the symbolic image of the album and where you also say: "When you looked at me I felt the feat", which is a very nice feeling.

— Yes. Let's see, I wasn't going to put bonus tracks, but rather finish the album with 100 lives, which is a look at immensity, but I thought that putting a song sung by me, recorded on my phone at home, which changed the sound, made it a bit understandable where everything that had just been heard was born, because all songs are born from me. The first thing that happens, the first of all, is that I record the song on my phone sung by me. And I think it's also nice to see the seed. I also have to tell you that the lyrics of La nuca also say: "Between the pistol and the shot, you are dead by my side". That also says it, that I see you as very optimistic.

Perhaps I am optimistic, you are right.

— It is true that there are parts and parts, because Mar Pujol's song, which is the first one, begins by saying: "In life there is a moment when we are immense, when beliefs are exhausted and from pain a flower is born." That is to say, to transform everything that hurts us into something positive, into something beautiful. Yes, the will to change, to transform, is there all the time.

Has your way of writing changed in recent years? Have there been readings that have led you more towards a more refined style?

— I think so. I read a lot of poetry, a great deal. And then, wow, you grow up and gain depth. The world seems to be for people from 20 to 35 years old, and a moment comes when you have to understand that life is something else, that it goes much further. You have to change priorities, and that makes you, as a recipient, understand things in a different way. For example, a poem by Alejandra Pizarnik: read ten years ago, perhaps I understood five layers, and now eight; and I trust that in ten years I will understand fifteen. Art is a vehicle for going into the depth of life, and a verse can say more than an entire book.

Why the image of the nape and the symbolism of "the musculature of empathy"?

— The idea was to be able to understand that this album stems from loneliness, but that loneliness becomes something very profound, and even more so in this society we live in. I believe that many of us feel lonely, and in this context there is an empathetic gesture: to turn our heads, look at the other, and understand that we are two people together who feel lonely. We can organize ourselves and accompany each other from this loneliness, understand each other from this loneliness.

All this you explain also has to do with a couple of quite powerful gestures you have made in recent months: one was the involvement with the Gaza Flotilla and the concert for Palestine at the Palau Sant Jordi.

— Going with the Flotilla was an absolutely unconscious gesture, that if I had thought about it a lot I wouldn't have done it, a desperate gesture. I have always taken refuge in art and music, and a point has been reached where I see that this does not change the world, it cannot stop a war. There are things that are so strong that music cannot stop them. And it was like a gesture to see if it could be of any use. That I didn't know, and I still don't know. Surely yes, and surely no.

Another gesture you've made has been to remove your music from Spotify.

— I know I'm doing significant self-sabotage, but I can't do it any other way. Why have I had this need? I've realized that I believe in people and that sooner or later many people will feel uncomfortable having music on Spotify and will decide to remove it and put it somewhere else; that Spotify will no longer be the only place where I can listen to music, but that it will diversify, as happens with streaming platforms for series and movies, even returning to the romantic idea of listening to entire albums, to the romantic idea of buying music. Because music being free for everyone is too much. I, who dedicate myself to music, think that what costs us a lot of money and many hours, people listen to for free. It's no longer just the whole fascist structure, which is terrible (support for the arms industry and for Trump, running ads for the ICE), but the exploitation that Spotify does of music and of small artists. Everyone knows it, and I think it will happen sooner or later. And since I believe in people, I think: well, make the first move, which is the hardest, and then little by little people will follow.

In recent years you have made soundtracks for films like Wolfgang.

— I like making soundtracks. I really like soundtracks that are small.

Like that of Un altre home, David Moragas' film?

— This is all solo piano, and I loved it because it depends solely and exclusively on yourself. I got along very well with David, because he had a very clear idea of what he wanted, and at the same time he was very aligned with what I do. Then there are those that are bigger and require more instruments and where there has been more trial and error. Each soundtrack is a world.