Carmen Sánchez Viamonte: “Faced with this social reality, there are many people who want to express themselves through the rage that rock music makes possible”

“Nothing that happens is forgotten, even if you don’t remember it.” With that phrase that is part of the wonderful universe that Hayao Miyasaki reflects in Spirited Away (2001), the first anime film to win an Oscar, Carmen Sánchez Viamonte begins her own journey in “Haku”, the bonus track that she decided to include in the “Malísima” edition of Mala (2023), the album with which the artist from La Plata closed the initial circle of a musical career that is no longer promising.

Sánchez Viamonte is, today, an established artist in the music scene that contains her: La Plata. But not for long. The singer and guitarist born in Villa Elisa, or Billie Eilish, as she often refers to her, has already created her own circuit outside the city of diagonals. This Saturday 8/24 she performs at Niceto Humboldt with Parkour at the Geriatric Center,

“Defining the city is like defining oneself, but for me La Plata is very special and very mysterious. Precisely a city with a lot of identity. It happens that the people from Buenos Aires treat us like provincials and the provincials treat us like people from Buenos Aires. So, we are there in an interlude that I think has always allowed us to be quite in our own world,” says the artist who will open the shows of El Mató a un Policía Motorizado at the Hipódromo (6/9) and Mostruo at Comunidad Ferroviaria (28/9), two very representative bands from La Plata.

That identity she refers to is part of a personal color with which Sánchez Viamonte allows herself to move along the edges between songs with lyrics that cut and a melody that can separate from the mid-tempo to also gain her own vocal mark. Something that, when asked if that personal nuance is worked on or is natural, the artist maintains that “it is a bit of both. In my case, the natural prevailed. At one point I realized that and also with time it became a decision. I could have followed the different trends, but I chose to reinforce that uniqueness that I felt and take it as a benefit or a virtue. It is the only possible way I have to do things because if I did something that I feel does not correspond to me, I would not enjoy it. And I would not feel like doing it.”

Journalist: Where are you in your career?

Carmen Sanchez Viamonte: At a time when I was playing a lot because I released albums very quickly and even though I’m already working on what’s coming, I’m trying to take it all with a grain of salt because before it was like I would write the songs and then I wanted to produce them and release them and I would set deadlines very quickly. This time I decided not to. I was collecting songs and making demos of them. And well… there we are, like cooking them slowly.

Q: And what changed? How did you stop that anxiety?

CSV: I think I changed a lot as a person in the meantime. I’m naturally anxious and that’s a problem of my generation. But in the process of the last two albums, La Fuerza (2022) and Mala, I realized the importance of giving up that anxiety for a little planning. to make the most of those albums and songs. I am very meticulous and, since I was very young, I always felt like an old man. So, as I grow up, I feel closer to my personal core. I am like a voracious learner, I like to absorb a lot. And along the way I also lost my fear of professionalism and began to perceive it as acquiring tools to do something in the best possible way with the raw material we have. And now I am giving myself time.

Q: Do you feel a little out of date on that path?

CSV: I feel like everything happens at the time it has to happen. I started making music when I was 15 and at that time I had originally put together a rock band and then I felt very rejected by that world and I got into it again in 2018, with the whole more feminist rock scene. I felt that there was a space and something to say. And then, in parallel with that, the whole trap explosion happened. And many people asked me why I made rock if I was 19 years old. Something like “why don’t you dedicate yourself to urban rhythms?”

Q: And what was your response?

CSV: It was something that happened naturally. Also, in recent years, they were saying that rock was dead and now suddenly many are making rock again. It seems that rock for me is a genre that goes beyond the aesthetic. It has a spiritual aspect that is quite immortal for me. And in this social moment, it also seems to me that there are people who really want to express themselves through that rage that rock makes possible. I feel that there is a resurgence. And right in this resurgence, I am making songs that are more about love, so I always go a little against the grain. I don’t know if I am old-fashioned or a pioneer, but I have already gotten used to it and I also understood that when you do things in a transparent way, there is always an audience available.

Q: Are those love songs part of the upcoming album?

CSV: The other day I said at a show that this upcoming album is more about love, something I’m not used to writing about from a romantic or positive perspective. It’s clear that I do write about relationships, but not so much about love. It’s going to be a very heterogeneous album, with everything that exists in me, since I’m a bit of everything that I express.

Q: In the final song of your latest album, “Duelo/ Ha llegó el amor” you anticipate something of what is to come. Was it something done consciously or without knowing what was coming?

CSV: That’s a song mostly for my family and for moments we’ve been through these past few years, but it was also like a wink or a connection with this next album I have in mind. Also, in the middle of it, without expecting it, I fell in love and got into a relationship. And well… one of my friends told me: “You made a premonitory song.” And something like that happened. The magic of songs exists.