At 43, theChileansinger-songwriterGepehas been traveling back in time.
Maybe its an age thing, but lately Ive been connecting with my childhood, he says.
Many of my friends are also paying attention to the music that they listened to when they were kids.
Diego Escalante Prada*
Must be a sign of the times.
He is also self-assured enough to dive with authority into reggae, cumbia and electronica.
My musical dreams were just that, something like an open secret.
It was seen as some sort of hobby.
to get to preserve my mental sanity, Ive always approached the future in short-term increments.
Outlining a plan for world domination would have been too neurotic.
Ive always loved the Spanish word for failure:desastre.
Most people will tell you, How can you name your record like that?
Calling it a disaster is like leaving a trash bag open.
That sense of fragility and austerity has been there since the days of Violeta Parra.
Most of the people in my band are folk musicians.
arana pollito is like a tango with a Venezuelan air to it.
Paloma draws from Andean and Afro-Colombian sounds.
My cousin loved Latin rock, and my neighbors listened to Chilean metal and rap.
I grew up with this colorful salad of sounds that seemed perfectly normal to me.
In my music-making process, its all about the song.
It can be a bachata, bolero, tango orcueca.
What matters is taking those elements to their fullest and most honest potential.
I was actually inspired by the Mickey Mouse segment on the movieFantasia.
I had completely forgotten about it, and fell in love with it again a few months ago.
Those bands seemed so huge and impossibly out of reach.
I was a young boy and thought I would never be able to become a musician.
I consciously tried to push all that gigantic mystique through a funnel and into the songs on this album.
Is it safe to assume, then, that you had a happy childhood?It was, yes.
I think it was happy because I managed to preserve myself.
I now realize that I found refuge in my inner world.
I knew that if things outside failed, I would be fine with everything that remained inside.
