Breogán Xague: The sonority of your lyrics is striking. I'm thinking, for example, of songs like Neniñué or Ajrú. What value do you attach to this within the language you use in your music? 

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Mercedes Peón:  I transform into titles words with a collective creation behind them, where phrases have a more contextual meaning, without the need to be subject, verb and predicate. I think of the beauty and strength seen from a non-elitist and non-intellectual perspective, I think of the polyhedral meanings that provide a deeper knowledge, bordering on the intuitive

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I seek musical sonorities with words that are not reduced to aesthetic proposals. I start from the least standardised Galician, from the language that is still linked to its creative origins, full of melodies that inspired my work. There is a political positioning in this, from the micro to the more global aesthetic and suggestive. 

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B.X.:  I think you deal with the importance of the language spoken, motherhood, gender or emigration in your compositions. How do you think this content relates to the Galician cultural identity heard in your music? 

 

M.P.:  You ask me about the language that is spoken, it's a very beautiful and complex question. There are languages that are spoken because they were created collectively and then there are languages of nation-states. What is done with a collectively created language, specifically with ours but extensible to any governmentally violated language, is to use it. This language, Galician, gives me a periphery that allows me to reach places that would be impossible to reach with hegemonic ones (in addition, of course, to its beauty and musicality.)

 

You also ask me about gender, this modern identification of people. I use the feminine as a generic. I generalise and omit ,again, to create tension. This tension interests me a lot as a political act and as a search for new forms. I see the tension as an aesthetic place without prejudice. Again, something non-explicit, meditated to create materials that form the compositions. We could say that it all begins with awareness, but that after a while, and installed there, my world revolves around these materials.  

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My intention is to be as individual as possible, using peculiarities that mixed with myself in a systemic way create a 21st century composer. Mutant, but with the wonder of having anchors, certainties and visions given to me by a community.Being aware that they are agreements of life, but that they enjoy the verification of the people who preceded us, and not of the modern verification devices (neither the clinic nor the media).

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Now let's get into the question at hand. How does what I do relate to Galician cultural identity? We know that identity is the circumstance of being one person or thing in particular and not another, determined by a set of traits or characteristics that differentiate it. Here, we have the pandeiretas (Galician tambourines), compositions with structures of melodies strongly influenced by my training in the villages and, above all, ternary rhythms, which form an identity of their own. I am a pandeireteira composer, this is the instrument transgressed to have a certain musical mastery. If someone wants to know where I'm from, even with my latest album, so conceptual and electronic, they could identify me geographically, without any doubt. Anyone born in Galicia could clearly identify me as well. Besides being a National Music Prize winner in my homeland, I know clearly that the people of the village adopted me as an artist of their own. I feel very grateful for those people who kept our language and our customs, even if I make contemporary music, I belong to them and this pleases me very much.

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On the other hand, I would like to talk about the experiences of identification with people from all over the world. There are very strong connections with people from Morocco, Poland, France, Italy or New Zealand and I am sure that this is because of the 3, the ternaries flowing in our veins and in the collective creations from all over the world.

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B.X.: The production of your latest works is becoming more and more interesting and innovative. Can you tell us about your production process and all the factors that go into it?          

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M.P.:  Inevitably, community relations and individual positioning as a political being enter into any of my processes. From this are born angers embodied in music and arrangements.  Arrangements in which I avoid the construction of Celtic music, looking for sound productions that never eliminate the most identifying and healing instruments. These are the pandeireta and the ferreñas (little metallic dishes joined to the tambourine) . These last ones always want to be hidden in the records, while, if you leave them, they are the rhythmic queens of any context in which they participate. I also associate the ferreñas with women musicians of oral transmission, composers who were the masters of the seráns (traditional festive evening meetings in Galicia).

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B.X.: In more international circuits, how do you experience Galician culture as a minoritised culture? How do you distribute such an identitarian music of a non-hegemonic culture in spaces where they are probably unaware of its situation? 

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M.P.:  I experience Galician culture as a minoritised culture in Galicia. It is in Galicia, and in Spain in second place, where it is minoritised, suffocating it and distancing it from all formal and non-formal fields.  There is a laxity in the academic curriculum with respect to Galician, so much so that even UNESCO has reproached the Xunta's government for this.

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But let's go into the sales circuit of music or any other artistic product. My music is programmed both in macro festivals and in more contemporary circuits with less capacity. I'm very lucky, I've been playing for twenty years and living only from what I do in this. Most of the time they don't know where I'm from. They usually say I'm a Spanish artist. In Spain they say I'm a Galician artist, in Galicia I'm an international artist. What I mean by this is that they don't reflect, or I don't communicate it explicitly, about what goes on behind my artistic-musical projects because I probably think in the abstract. There is a communication that works on other levels and I think that the interesting thing is to let each music take its own path.

 

Since the first album, the distribution was peculiar. The label Resistencia placed the album on international platforms and it reached number one in several reference magazines. I didn't know they existed, for me it was totally surprising, but I didn't think much of it at that moment. Today I am listened to in twenty-five countries that I know of.

 

In 2001 I set up a small company. We were looking for local agents for the distribution of live music. The philosophy was to find professionals who would distribute only in the territories they dominated. In the first year I already had representatives in France, Italy, Portugal and Catalonia, as well as Galician agencies for internal and international distribution and ourselves for everything that didn't have exclusive representation.

 
In this way, I was skipping the big distribution agencies, creating an international network.

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B.X.: Throughout your career, it's very interesting to see how you move between circuits.  I'd love to hear about your experience on O luar, (Galician TV show) the programme through which you started to build your audience.

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M.P.:   O Luar is a programme in which I was an active agent for the spread of collective creation in small microhabitats. I took entire villages to sing and dance. I spent twenty years in villages doing field collections and, above all, relating to and deeply loving our people, taking them with all the love and care in the world so that they would have a wonderful experience. This was one of the turning points in our imagination, as the most powerful verification device at the time certified that the section I was in charge of had an audience of 55%. What was being broadcast was invaluable. The people of the villages recognised in me a young woman who treated them with real love, admiration and artistic recognition.  

 

I am a public figure for that person who keeps our customs by living in harmony with a very large part of us who are outside the capitalist system. By this I mean that there are foliadas and seráns without money being involved, having the sense of a common language with which to relate to each other. Imagine how wonderful it is to be able to sing or play for these people, or even to show them my compositions. I am that girl who was seen playing the tambourine and singing a cappella a Cantar de bois. This has been a real gift, many people would be surprised by the reactions and analyses I have received, many of them much more interesting than those of a specialised critic.