“Sorry, my Spanish is terrible. Thank you for being patient, surely only twenty percent of what I am saying can be understood, but thank you. In clear, slow Spanish, Devendra Banhart He apologizes because he thinks he is not making himself understood, although his link with the language goes back to his childhood. Born in Texas but raised in Venezuela by a married couple of yogis, Banhart came into contact with Spanish from his early years, and although it is not his native language, he speaks it fluently. As it is a second language, its choice of words is erratic at times, although in general it seems more like a decision taken on purpose, as can be seen in the responses to this interview, a way of playing with meanings until redefining them, or else assigning them a new interpretation.
His relationship with Spanish is also reflected in his work. With more than twenty years of career, Banhart became known with an intimate and at times delirious folk with quotas of psychedelia, tropicalism and Latin music. Almost automatically converted into a champion of independent singer-songwriters from the turn of the millennium to this part, throughout his discography there are songs in the language of Cervantes that have him emphasizing the culture he absorbed since he was little in songs like “Carmensita”, “Quédate Luna” or “La Pastorcita Perdida”.
Frequent habitué of Buenos Aires, this week Banhart returns to the country to perform twice. On the one hand will be part of the Music Wins festival program this Saturday at Club Ciudad de Buenos Aires along with groups like Allvvays, Metronomy and The Magnetic Fields and on the other you will have your side show this thursday in C Art Media Complex, Corrientes 6271where he will present two songs from the album that he has just finished recording under the production of the Welshman Cate Le Bon.
-Both in the styles and in the languages, the idea of heritage is very present in your music. How did you cross those two worlds?
-That word is very interesting because it is like a platform, from there one begins. We always start with heredity, it’s all we know at the beginning of our mythological adventure, making art like when you start drawing your figures in the cave. You have to start in the land of the culture in which you find yourself, so that will always be part of the language or the symbols that one uses in his art. For me it has a little bit of love and hate, my relationship with my heritage is bittersweet. I was born in Texas but I wasn’t listening to country music. Almost immediately I left for Venezuela, where everything was salsa, merengue, samba and cumbia. That music is part of my being, of my DNA, but it wasn’t “my” music until much later. For me there is a very strong love for that Latin music, but I also use it in a more satirical way.
-There is also another phenomenon, which is that when you sing in Spanish it is as if it were another identity of yours. Even your voice changes, and so does the way you pronounce words.
-The theater has always been very funny for me. I’ve been writing songs for over twenty years, and in that time my albums had a lot of characters that I made up, and they’re songs sung from the perspective of a character that isn’t me. For example, “Fancy Man” is sung from the perspective of a white privilege total. Now I just finished an album and there’s no character on that album, and there wasn’t on the last one either, and that worries me a little bit because I don’t want to be one of those people who get old and start talking about them. It worries me because there is no joke in this last album. This last year of the pandemic I was thinking of fighting it with jokes, but I couldn’t, all the new songs are very serious. At the same time, it’s not my job to be funny either, although sometimes it’s easier to distribute a difficult reality in a sugar pill.
-And do you think that the public interprets or understands that you are not necessarily the one who is singing?
-For me it is so obvious that I do not care how each person interprets it. At the same time, if they interpret it in a totally non-ironic or totally negative way, of course I want to fix that and be able to explain a little bit, but for me the song ends when there is no need to explain it. It’s open to different interpretations and it’s great, but having to explain the concept doesn’t work very well with the music. It’s much better for an art painting or a photograph in some gallery because that comes with a guide that you can read the title and a little bit of the concept. You can take a sculpture by Joseph Beuys or Walter de María, and there the explanation of the concept increases the work, but for me the song is ready to share when it is not necessary to explain it, because I will not have that opportunity.
-You just mentioned that you are preparing a new album. The last thing you released is something quite atypical in your career, with ambient and new age instrumental songs. How did that change come about?
-That music always interested me and I always found it very utilitarian. I grew up listening to that music, like salsa, cumbia, and merengue. Ambient and new age are part of my youth, because I was born in a family of yogis and my dad’s guru chose my name. The music that those hippies from Venezuela listened to in the 80s was all of this. When the pandemic started, I was in need of music in a different way than before. Before the pandemic, I think I used music to be able to socialize, to be able to put myself in that attitude of “Let’s play music to go dancing, to go out, to see people.” When the pandemic started I needed something to calm me down, to give me a more peaceful vibration, a bit of space between me and my thoughts, and for me that was always done by the ambient music of Harold Budd, Brian Eno, all the people who make music. sculptural. A lot of my work as a songwriter is to go out and look at the world, and I couldn’t do that, so I started writing music that could be a refuge for us. It is a music that is conducted to meditate, to connect with the breath, the body and the thoughts.
-You just mentioned meditation. Some years ago you said that you had to go to her to learn how to socialize, something that one supposes came quite naturally to you.
-It’s a paradox for me, because I really do care about people and I want to be part of a community, and I really want to find something that I can love in all people, but it’s not like that (laughs). I search and people annoy me, I always want to be alone, and I think I have many walls and I can be very negative. I can figuratively close the door on people very quickly, and that worries me. To combat this there is a Buddhist practice called Mother Recognition. It doesn’t matter if you believe in reincarnation or not, but you can have that attitude that everyone has been your mother and you have been the mother of everyone. That helps me navigate a little more and be in a social world. It’s weird, because my job is to be there singing to people and be with them, but I live more like in a little cave. The time of loneliness It’s very important, it doesn’t mean you don’t like people, but it’s very difficult to love everyone all the time.
-It will be your fifth visit to Argentina, but it will be the first in which you come without a new record under your arm. Does that make your show flow in a different way?
-I like when we are presenting a whole new album, it is so divine to be able to present the new work, it is something that encourages me a lot. At the same time, it’s not like we’re just playing old songs, we’re playing two new songs and some covers that we’ve never played before. There are fifteen people who have played with me over the years, so it’s always changing. This group is totally different, so it feels new. It doesn’t feel like we’re there playing the old songs, we know it’s going to change every night and it’s going to change with the energy of each specific moment. For us the most important thing is to be able to present the songs in a way that is like a surprise with us, we don’t want it to be a movie. I will never be professional. Never, never… although that’s not true either. I love being professional, a great one, ok? What I don’t want is to be slick (talented, in English). I like to see those bands where everyone is perfect and does the perfect thing, it’s amazing, but I’m never going to be like that and I don’t want to be like that. That scares us a little bit, because we don’t know what’s going to happen and that encourages us.
-Before we talked about inheritance. You mentioned that your name comes precisely from the fact that your parents were yogis and that their guru chose your name, but your middle name, Obi, refers to Obi Wan Kenobi, from Star Wars. How do you think these two universes coexist in your person?
-What an interesting question that nobody has asked me. I want to answer it like psychically, without an answer and to get into your mind. Science fiction is like a mirror to mystical realities, there is a lot of mystical stuff. All science fiction heroes to me are like the lamas and mystical monkeys of spirituality. To me they are very similar. The Jedis are like the great lamas meditating in a Tibetan cave, they are the same thing. For me the big thing they have in common is that the great heroes of science fiction and spirituality are people who have won the internal war. And more than anything, they have style. What they have in common is fashion, baby.