Spanish folk band Vigüela will present a special interactive online event called Conciertajo, in which they will use technology, before and during the act, to counterbalance physical distance. Conciertajo will take place on October 17th, 2020 within the framework of LaborArte festival, organized by the Office for Spain of the International Labour Organization (ILO).
The pandemic has forced the music sector to rethink its approach over the last six months. The first step has been to set the cameras for video streaming. But why not use the tools that provide direct contact with the public to create a collaborative and interactive concert? With this idea in mind, Araceli Tzigane from Mapamundi Música and Vigüela designed Conciertajo.
According to Araceli, coordinator of the event and manager of the band, “The director of the Office for Spain of the International Labour Organization requested from us an online event that goes beyond live streaming. Vigüela has the advantage that our traditional music from central Spain is much improvised and has always been used to channel the claims, the hardships, and the worries of the people. So we designed an event with several ways in which the public can participate in advance of the creation of the repertoire: a survey of topics of special relevance, a life story contest (that will produce a song in the shape of a romance, a tale made into a song) and they can also send us their couplets for the band to sing them.
During the event, we will be chatting with the public in real time too and we set some time to respond to their specific requests. To gather all these participative tools, we have published a website, www.conciertajo.com.”
The name Conciertajo contains a play on words, as tajo is both the river Tajo, that crosses Spain and specifically Toledo province (the band Vigüela was born at the village El Carpio de Tajo) and tajo in slang means “work”. So, this will be the online concert about work conditions.
The LaborArte festival has been taking place in Madrid since 2018. It was born to commemorate the ILO’s centenary, that took place in 2019. It has been supported by the municipality of Madrid and held downtown, at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque, a former military headquarters built at the beginning of the 18th century, transformed into a cultural center in 1969. This year, LaborArte has had to take an online shape.
The Conciertajo live event will be broadcast on the ILO Youtube Channel on Saturday, October 17, at 19:00 (7:00 p.m.) CET.
To accompany the communication campaign, the band Vigüela is recording videos with newly created lyrics, talking about the current events, like the effects of the pandemic in the working conditions or the departure king emeritus Juan Carlos I who moved to Abu Dhabi.
Traditional music has always been at the service of the people, channeling complaints and sorrows with humor. The current events are portrayed, and no institution is safe from the fertile imagination of the people. Not even royalty, of any kind. The verses in the following video speak, among other things, of the departure of king emeritus Juan Carlos from Spain after a series of scandals, as well as of the injustice of history in dealing only with kings and potentates, when it is workers who build the world.
Viguela also made this original song dedicated to World Music Central:
Juan Antonio Torres, artistic director of Vigüela, stated to World Music Central: “We are really thankful to the media that are paying attention to Conciertajo. For us, this effort is great challenge and a big joy. Despite the lack of physical proximity, we are already feeling the public very close and we are privileged to be able to convey what concerns them. We as musicians position ourselves at the service of the people.
Art supports society to give an understandable shape, to share with others and to bear the situations we face as humans. Art helps to endure as individuals and as societies and also helps raise the voice of our sufferings. And, of course, in these terrible times we are going through, we want to create a moment of extreme musical beauty to provide enjoyment to the public as much as possible!”
Send your couplets and tales to www.conciertajo.com
Author: World Music Central News Room
World music news from the editors at World Music Central