Journalist: What repercussions is “Loving is serious?”
Belén Pasqualini: Very nice. Repercussions come in through different ends of the ball. On the one hand, the people who have been following my path celebrate this album with a definitely pop character, the responsibility of Lucas Martí’s production, with a stamp so typical of him, with a vintage sound but at the same time re modern. On the other hand, people come who say ‘wow, César Banana Pueyrredón on the album, what a great thing!’, Which also enables a certain generational crossing that amuses me. There are people who tell me ‘it’s a re-romantic album. It’s pop, it’s cool, but it’s romantic. ‘ There also appears the possibility of resignifying romanticism. In these times where everything is medium light and without compromise, gambling for a record that talks about love, which is a super trite topic but what always comes to light is not what you tell but how you tell it, is a bet on romanticism and to say that to be romantic we have to have courage.
Q .: In times of frenetic formats, why keep betting on releasing an album?
B.P.: Everything that I pay attention to my own thirst and that eventually goes against the moment of the world must be done. I live clinging to my basic needs, which are not only to sleep, eat and have money to live. Creation is a basic necessity for me. I also liked the idea that there was a concept, and I think that takes a little more time than a song. It seems to me that in an album you can show more the colors of the fan. When it’s just a song, it gets bypassed among a bunch of tracks by different artists, with random playlists. With “Loving is something serious” you enter an album that suggests that you stay a while on a planet of sound and images. I have a better chance of getting into my world with an album; at some point I know I’m going to steal a bit of your heart.
Q .: Why do you present the album as the closing of a trilogy? What unites the three of them?
B.P.: You have a song, inside a record, and a record inside a trio of records. It is not something that I raised from the beginning, but it was more than ten years between the first and this one. I feel like a circle is closing. On a musical level, I need to go to another planet; to another form. With this album I come to a certain expressive and maturing conclusion of a stage. A stage is fulfilled. All three are part of the same family of songs. Now I want to do something else. For me it is a good closing. The other two albums are titled with a single word, and this one is like a manifesto. There, I already played it. I want to go to another stratosphere, which I still don’t know what it is.
P .: On the album there are different urban images, of the street, of the pedestrian. Did the outbreak of the pandemic influence this aspect?
B.P.: Some songs I wrote in a pandemic. “This is not going”, the one mentioned by the pedestrian, I wrote it in a pandemic. That image got mixed up with me; something from the past came to me there. Today I discovered that something from the future got into it. I wrote it putting things that happened later, very crazy. There are times when songs come to foretell something that is going to happen. They throw me data.
P .: You are a multifaceted artist. What freedom do you find in music that is not found in other disciplines?
B.P.: Music has this wonderful thing of being a discipline close to meditation: if you are not present when you make music, you miss the beat. When you are acting you can be thinking a little more about ‘che, later I eat a Milanese’ or ‘what did I do yesterday’. When you make music, if you want the groove to be there, the swing, you have to be beat after beat. It forces you to be present like no other art. For me it is above all because it infects good things, because it heals. I have it at the height of a religion. In my work as an actress or playwright there is always music. I try to get my religion into the other artistic things I do. My economic income was always given more by acting, and in the musical, perhaps what gave me the most professional visibility was the one-man show. That’s where I practiced music as a professional job in my life. I am always in the struggle between acting and music; I don’t know who is my lover and who is my official partner.
Q .: How do you feel for Thursday’s date?
B.P.: I would love for the room to fill up and for the songs to resonate with the audience. I have a high expectation with the invitation and special presence of César Banana Pueyrredón, who comes to sing the song in which he participates in the album. We are going to play the songs with a glorious band. There is also anxiety that the songs sound live and not layered, as they were recorded. Listening to the album live, 3D, is an experience that I want to live and I want to do it with as many viewers as possible. I don’t want to sound narcissistic, but hopefully the only reason they don’t get close is because they have another three-dimensional date at that time.
Q .: How did you come up with the idea of inviting you to César “Banana” Pueyrredón?
B.P.: I met him going to record a greeting for the wedding of some friends of an ex-boyfriend. My ex told me ‘since we are going to talk to César, why don’t you come? By the way, you know him, you who make music … ‘I went and we hit a good wave. Then I wrote a song and wanted to present it to him to see if he liked it for his repertoire, a cheeky one! I went to his office, I sang it to him. Then he came to see me at the one-man show and invited me to the musical that he was going to put together. We became like friends and in some of the talks, Lucas Martí told me ‘for this topic, César Banana Pueyrredón could be barbaric’. At first I didn’t see it, and then I said ‘but yeah, sure, it’s a great idea’. We called him Cesar, we showed him the song, he liked it and he re-penetrated. He came into the studio and we made him a banana pudding. He opened his mouth, his unmistakable voice, and in two takes he nailed it. He was a huge contribution to the song and now I can’t imagine it without him.
Q .: What is the news of “Christiane. A scientific bio-musical”?
B.P.: I am currently presenting it. On Saturday we are going to do a free performance at 9:30 pm at the Cultural Center of Science, for The Night of the Museums. It is a work that premiered in 2017 and has more or less 250 performances. I did it in Argentina, in Latin America and a little bit in the US, in Spain and in Portugal. It gave me a lot of satisfaction. It is a tribute that was based on the autobiography that my grandmother wrote, which is called “I wanted what I did.”
Q .: How is the staging?
B.P.: On stage there is nothing; I am with a romper and a piano. I tell the story, I composed music, there are two music stands with very synthetic and emotional images of Sofía Esparza, a cartoonist from Trelew. It’s very crazy, because I thought it was a family event, intimate, that my family would be interested in and that’s it, and I found a very popular, very universal resonance. Many people traversed the story of this woman, which is the story of a lot. It is a story of passion, of science, of courage. It is a feminine story, but I always say that it is not dedicated to the brave women who overcame so many men who would not let them. Yes, it is dedicated to these women, but also to all the people who overcome the daily difficulties to get ahead with their professional life as well as their personal life; to the brave and passionate.
Q .: What opinion does she have about the work?
B.P.: She didn’t see it. She does not leave the house, because she has been uncomfortable with her legs for a few years and prefers not to go out. I gave it to him to read, I performed parts for him, I sent him emails from his friends who saw the play. But like that, from top to bottom, he never saw her. He read it and is aware of everything. I bring journalists to him and I do the whole spiel. She is aware of everything.
* Belén Pasqualini presents “To love is something serious” on Thursday, November 4 at 8:30 p.m., in Room A of Cultural San Martín, Sarmiento 1551, CABA, with tickets for sale on the “Tu Entrada” portal.
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