Lildami: "I've released a mega-Catalan album because that's how I feel."

BarcelonaOn a white horse like Saint George, Lildami, the musical nickname of Damià Rodríguez Vila (Terrassa, 1994), returns to the music scene from the cover of his fourth album, entitled Bentornado (Halley Records). There are nine short songs, which ride towards being hits, in which the musician raps in Catalan, plays with popular words and sounds, draws on generational references, and talks about his ten years in the business. On Friday, he debuted his tour in Terrassa, and on Saturday, May 17, he performs at the Maleducats festival at Barcelona's Parc del Fòrum, the start of an intense spring and summer.

Bentornado Can we say that it is an album that defends Catalan tradition without complexes, which means rereading it from a modern perspective?

— Yes, I really like it when you put it like that. I've come up with a mega-Catalanist album, even though I didn't intend to, when I started making it. Yes, as I've been progressing, I've been finding references, and I look at it now and, wow, every song has something that reminds us of folklore, culture, or everything that surrounds us in Catalonia. Even the Bentornado, which is a super-funky introductory track, suddenly I say honey and cottage cheese. I wasn't aware of it.

Are you afraid of making a mega-Catalan album?

— Fear why?

Because of the political readings it may have.

— Unfortunately, we're at a time when everything you do always has a political interpretation, from one side or the other. So, no, because when you're making music, you always risk having a misinterpretation or a different interpretation than the one you want to give, and that's also the point, that people can misinterpret your lines. It's getting to the point of making music where everything is so pre-packaged, that you don't leave room for second readings or for what the artist wants to say with this. But yes, it's clearly a Catalan album because that's also how I feel.

In fact, there are now also many highly successful artists revisiting popular culture in a contemporary way, from Rodrigo Cuevas to Bad Bunny.

— Bad Bunny's latest album takes musicians from Puerto Rico, takes more classical references from there, and I think that's what's beautiful. What's strange to me is being here and looking for references from the other side of the world, when we really have an amazing culture, popular music, our own very powerful iconography... Americans already do it, sampling soul and gospel, we don't need to sample it too. My environment, the place where I grew up, is different from where a person from Chicago grew up. If we don't have the same life or the same traditions, what's the point of me trying to imitate this culture when it's not mine? We've tried. bent back in the Catalan tradition, in this culture, without complexes, we stand up for ourselves.

There's a recent and close reference, like the Tyets sardana, that has had a huge impact. Do you think young people had the prejudice that Catalan culture is something minor or boring?

— Or old ones. I don't know. In hip-hop, there are a lot of people who have already sampled Catalan things, but perhaps because of the genre itself, they haven't reached that level, there weren't such good examples. mainstream like the case of the sardana by the Tyets. I have a song on the first album called Serrallonga, in the second a habanera, I have always tried to live surrounded by that imagery, but for this album, where I rap more again, I wanted to enhance all of this.

Man, you make merchandising with a Catalan ceramic tile!

— It seems Guillem Gisbert also has tiles... But I didn't copy him. It's true that my cover directly refers to the tiles of traditional Catalan trades. I came up with the idea more than six months ago. I was in Montserrat and we bought a couple of tiles for our house, and I said: "The next album will be that, and I want to make tiles." It's all an excuse to sell tiles.

What tiles did you buy?

— Two. One of the Moreneta (the Black Madonna) saying "welcome" that goes really hard, and one saying "God protect you" with the coat of arms of Catalonia.

Do you have a special connection with Moreneta and Montserrat? They appear a lot on the album.

— Yeah, don't think about it. I don't have any particular obsession. But it's true that it's the mountain I'm close to. We occasionally go for a walk around Montserrat. But if I'd been smarter, I would have thought this year was the millennium and played with the marketing. It was when I already had the theme that I saw it on TV: "Oh, fuck, he's the millennial, man."

One of the singles is The Oatmeal Dance, a version of the traditional song.

— It's a song that sums up the album very well: we're taking a traditional Catalan song, with very powerful lyrics, and it's me rapping.

Do you feel like you've been sowing all these years and now it's time to reap?

— I guess so. I'm a guy who's always taken work very personally, I spend all day worker In my project, from the moment I wake up until I go to sleep. I've used the analogy of sowing and harvesting wheat many times in different topics. For me, harvesting wheat is like working, and when you earn the money is when you harvest the harvester. The moment your paycheck comes in is like dancing the oats dance, dancing when the money falls.

In the song you rap very direct phrases like "We'll do it again" and "For you 4 bars, for me it's a hit, for you 4 bars, for me a country." To what extent is music a political tool for you?

— I think that, unfortunately, doing it in Catalan is already a political position. Because, for example, The Oatmeal Dance It's gone viral beyond the people who control me, and suddenly they insult you simply for singing in Catalan. Damn, I'm not messing with anyone, I'm just defending my language, my country, and the one I consider myself to belong to. And there are a lot of people who have taken it as "it's an attack on me." I'm not attacking anyone, I'm just doing my thing and that's it! So, I think it's still political, especially when you take into account the state of Catalan currently, because it seems like making music in Catalan is a political act of reclaiming Catalan, because you want more people to talk to it, you want to give it a go, because if not, you sing in Spanish and that's it. But I also don't feel like I'm actively doing politics, saying what's right, what's wrong, you have to go watch a movie, I like to manage the critical spirit.

You mention Catalan: "My grandmother couldn't study in Catalan, and now her grandson fills the square singing in Catalan." Is this the path to normalization?

— 100%. Normalization means having good music and shitty music, having tabloids, or simply saying "what the fuck."

There's also a barb: "If you receive the income and do nothing else, call me Joan Manuel Serrat."

— It's not a dart, man, it's a wink, because the song is three hundred years old but everyone remembers The Oatmeal Dance by Joan Manuel Serrat with arrangements by Antoni Ros Marbà. But there's something else on the album. I always throw things out, but not barbs: I live very quietly, I don't need to throw barbs at anyone.

In Montserrat Yes, you talk about the daggers that fly in the world of music.

— It's a song about eating quietly and eating twice as much, about doing my thing and staying a little apart from everyone, but still continuing on my path. And I came up with the line "I'm still standing: Montserrat," referring to the mountain, which rains or snows but is there, and suddenly it has the double meaning with my mother, whose name is Montserrat, and it seemed so powerful to me that the song should be called that. I think daggers are intrinsic to being human. I've found myself in music, but I've found myself more in life. I speak in Good wind and new boat, which is a song that can be about love or heartbreak, but above all, it's a song that speaks of friendship, which I don't think exists that often. The feeling of having someone close who wants to see you well, but doesn't want to see you as better than them. If I have a true friend who has achieved goals, I'm as happy as if I had achieved them myself.

The album is full of idioms and sayings, geographical and culinary references, from different generations. Is it a way of naturalizing the entire Catalan landscape?

— 100%. If 10 flight It is the most iconic, in this sense, references are passing by; Cat and dog; I'm talking to you about the Viandox sauce from Terrassa; Strong Horse; of Fort Knox; of a thousand concepts. What's always tickled me most about rap is when they throw you a code and you have to look it up. I've learned a lot of general knowledge, many things about life, from listening to rap. I've discovered series, movies, concepts that I wouldn't have discovered if I hadn't listened to rap my whole life.

You say in Prudencio Bares that you married music but "if it must be headaches, fame and anxieties, I want a divorce."

— Yes, but always from a privileged perspective. All jobs have their downsides. Maybe you like your job, but interviewing Dami is a real pain. I have a job I've dreamed of my whole life, but obviously there are downsides, and what's taken its toll on me the most is that I've been doing this for seven or eight years, and from the moment I wake up until I go to bed, I'm thinking about this. I can't stop. Ever. I'm a pretty restless person, and when things are going on, I have trouble breathing [squeezes chest], and I experience it with anxiety.

Do you think the pressure of expectation or popularity takes its toll on you?

— Popularity? [incredulous] No. This is something that is lost when you have done things that have minimally worked. Over the time I have been making music I have done so many different things that the people who follow me already understand that Lildami is not even about music, but about doing what I feel like at any given moment, be it rap, or Supermarket, or a habanera: the only thing that sets me apart is that I'm not afraid to experiment.

Fairly Supermarket, which has millions of views, is surely a gateway to a wider audience than just urban music.

— When you go to a concert, you see who's waiting. Supermarket. "Dude, I came here so you could do that fucking song and I want to leave." I have like four or five of those songs, like I love you the same either I don't care, which I love to do live, are songs that I adore, and I think they are the tolls to pay, in the sense that I am going to do Supermarket but you will also have to eat a 2019 theme called You too will die, and the chorus goes: "Son of a bitch, you'll die too." It's nice to see their faces, if they're with children. That's the rule: you have to pay full price.

This that in Pokkibo you describe the perfect son-in-law.

— Yes, when I was writing this song I was imagining the typical serial killer from the movies, the one everyone says: "I didn't expect that! He always said hello, he always took out the trash, he changed a light bulb for me." [paraphrases the song] "A perfect neighbor, an obedient worker, the hero who stops a bullet for your president." In the end, no one is perfect in every way, and it's better if there are few good ones, and that in every way; few good friends. It's difficult, but I want to try not to live in this consumerism of wanting to have more and more, to have more, but rather for what we have to be cool.

There's more common sense than rage here. Which team are you on?

— I have it tattooed [he shows me his arm], I have the Cat and dog, sanity, and ecstasy. I've always felt myself in that duality. Especially when I worked as an engineer, I was the dog, the sanity, the rationality, and ecstasy was the person who made music, the spontaneity. I'm very rational; I analyze everything well before making a decision, because I want it to be the best one. I do it even if I have to buy a phone or a plant. When writing, you can see which are the themes of ecstasy, like the If 10 flight What do we do with Galgo Lento, or the rational ones, like Good wind and new boat.

Have you ever left someone like that?

— No, no. I'm a bad person, but not that bad. I don't recommend it, no.

The path, What do you do with Miki Núñez and Black Music Big Band? Talk about the path and the milestones: where do you want to go?

— I don't have excessive ambition. I've always been pretty rational about this, I've kept my feet on the ground. No one in my family would have given a dime for me to get where I'm at: I don't come from a family of musicians, my parents aren't music lovers, I haven't gone to concerts with them, I haven't been enrolled in a conservatory, I haven't played traditional music. I'm not very ambitious because what I dreamed of ten years ago I've already achieved with flying colors. First it was having a song get a thousand hits. Then it was making a living from music. And when you achieve that, you realize it's the pain in life, that we're programmed to do something and not enjoy it, and you're thinking about the next step; it's the samsara of the Hindus, that feeling of existential emptiness. I don't know what the next step will be. I'm not at all interested in becoming a Spanish artist: what a bummer to do a gig in Zamora, but not because of Zamora, but because I play here, I sleep at home... My ambition is to live peacefully with the people who love me by my side, and that's it.

You've made forays into television. Is that an open path?

— I don't know. Life is like this, you never know where you'll be in five years. I was asked to audition forEuphoria And, because I'm a crazy person, I thought: "I think I can." This is a very testosterone-filled thought: "I think I can land a plane, if I'm told to from the control tower. It can't be that badAnd suddenly I discovered it's something I love, something I'd never seen before. Who knows where I'll end up? I'm a person who tries not to lock doors against whatever may come. Life's too short to stay in a room. Of course, it's scary when things don't go well, but it's what has always motivated me to do my best, because the worst thing that can happen to me is to return to where I am.

On the album, you rap more again, but it also has a very pop sound. What will it be like live?

— We will do a the best of Lildami, with the songs that we like to do live the most and that work the best, which we have rearranged, and we have added almost the entire new album, which is already thought out with a band, guitar, keyboard and drums, which gives it a vibe Incredible. I think about what the project itself can absorb and what's economically viable, and in terms of setup, because sometimes you only have fifteen minutes to get started. I've always tried to understand my place within the industry, what I can do, and what's a little extra.

How do you see the Catalan urban scene, which has been in full swing for a few years? Do you think you've paved the way a bit?

— It's nice, especially because what makes a scene real and not a mushroom is that you can choose, that there is variety, that you have groups that you can put in the same bag but they have differences between them.