On the occasion of her Goya nomination and her latest singles with Julieta Venegas and Pipiolas, Rigoberta Bandini has given an interview to El País. In a symbolic way, the talk with Álex Vicente took place at Ocaña, the bar in honor of the LGTB+ performer where the artist began performing 4 years ago.
Rigoberta jokes about how “intense” she was when she announced her retirement (“I needed to impose a chronology, to mark the end of a stage. I’m very square about that”) and advances what the second album she is preparing will sound like. She says it will have “a little different colors”: “I’ve gotten involved, I think it’s going to be a long album, I have about 45 songs, although few have been produced. My way of composing has not changed, but I want to play with my voice and not always sing in the same way.
Surprisingly, the artist does not seem very comfortable talking to the press and states: «You journalists are not very friends of mine. I don’t have much love for you. “The ones who have given me the most trouble are you.” In particular, she states that she was hurt by the controversy over whether ‘Ay, Mama’ was a transphobic song because of the reference to “women who bleed” and she regrets certain interviews: “Maybe I had to say no to more.” things. I’m naïve about this, and quite natural, and I jumped at each headline without giving it much thought. It’s what has made me suffer the most. If she could go back, there are interviews she would not have accepted. That’s why I stopped. It was a way of saying: “I’m leaving, don’t touch my balls anymore. Now I’m going to say no to everything.”
She also responds to the controversies about whether she was a posh girl from Barcelona: “My parents have lived renting their entire lives. For four details they wanted to pigeonhole me. But I understand, I do that with others too.” And to his religious beliefs: «I went into that garden by myself, but I think it’s good that this voice exists. The figure of God or the spiritual has been taken over by the right. What the hell… What you understand by God should be left-wing, because it is more connected to another way of seeing life. Coming from conservative contexts with high religiosity, I wanted to put bombs in those places. Debris explodes in my face and it hurts, but I don’t regret it. It is something that is going to be difficult for me to change, because I believe in it a lot.
Regarding the reference to Britney Spears in his latest lyrics, he avoids comparison by age, although not by substance. «Being the broken toy of the music industry would be complicated because I already feel like a lady. But if she had started a little younger, maybe yes. When I go to any showroom I can’t even fit a fucking size of the big brands. I have given birth, I am 33 years old and I am a little back from everything, but if I were 23 I would end up with a TCA like a cathedral. They don’t make it easy for us to be mentally healthy.”
Podcast with Rigoberta Bandini (late 2022):
