Rosalía is on the cover of El País Semanal today following the release of her new album, ‘LUX’, which is already breaking the charts. Vila Tobella tells Xavi Sancho about his interest in theology, the mystical concept behind the album or the filming of ‘Euphoria’.
Social networks also come up, and Sancho elegantly directs the conversation towards the controversy of Rosalía’s political position. This summer, the artist was singled out by designer Miguel Adrover for not having denounced Israel’s massacre in Palestine online, and Rosalía responded by asking that those at the top be singled out.
Rosalía, in El País Semanal, adds that her relationship with the networks is “ambivalent”, that if she did not dedicate herself to music she probably would not use them, and questions the couch activism of social networks, which she considers “pseudo-activism.”
His exact words are: “There are topics that are so delicate that I wouldn’t want to choose the wrong words. “I’m not comfortable with Instagram’s pseudo-activism.” Rosalía insists that the creation of her album has kept her away from the networks, and argues that, during this creation process, she has preferred not to add more “noise.”
Vila Tobella indicates that she feels more comfortable “doing” and not “explaining”: “I greatly respect activism, the real one,” she says. «But if an artist is making an album, he cannot also be doing meaningful activism and, then, releasing a story on networks, I don’t know to what extent it is frivolizing. Sometimes it seems that, okay, a story has already been made, check at the level of consciousness, I feel comfortable and that’s it.
When Sancho suggests that a statement or symbolic gesture by Rosalía online “resonates” and influences, the artist reflects: “Yes, but there is so much noise… Shall I add something? Will I help the action, which is what is important? Or I’ll just end up contributing to more noise and chaos. I don’t think I have the answer, no matter how much I ask myself. Of course, I try to learn how to always do it better, because I know that I have a responsibility. The singer adds: «It hurts me that silence is interpreted as taking sides. Why must everything be so performative? A topic as delicate as what is happening in Palestine… I condemn the genocide, it is obvious. As a person I make a series of decisions in my life that are not publicly known and I do not want to reduce them to something performative, because that is what my networks are, the artist and the performance. I feel bad that by not putting words in a performative way to an issue as delicate and complex as this one, it can be understood that you have chosen sides.
Next, Rosalía acknowledges that the controversy with Adrover hurt her. «But I learn and every day I try to do better. I feel much more comfortable when I have a one-on-one conversation with a person and talk at length about something than writing a story. I feel more comfortable, for example, running a foundation. I understand that others have other ways of doing it, but in the long run…
