The Tamesis
Rosalía followed Chiqui to Barcelona’s premier music conservatory, the Superior Music School of Catalonia (ESMUC), where she won a place at the school each year for a student who wanted to specialize in flamenco singing. (Rosalía established a scholarship at the school, and when the school admitted two outstanding students that year, she paid for both.)
Around the time Rosalía graduated, director Pedro Almodóvar saw her perform in an old theater in Madrid. “Rosalía sat on a chair and sang, like old flamenco singers used to do,” Almodóvar recalled in an email. “I was struck by this detail, which is, so to speak, typical for a performance that is not that. I was amazed by her mastery of different styles of flamenco.” He added: “Her extraordinary vocal ability was evident from the beginning, and although she sounded like an old-school flamenco singer, everything about her was different and new.”
Almodóvar later cast her in his 2019 film, pain and glory, Being a country girl and doing laundry in the river with Penelope Cruz. “The river made a huge noise,” Almodóvar said. “I wanted to record in direct voice. For this I needed a singer with a powerful voice who could sing a cappella and be heard: Rosalia’s voice is so powerful that even though she is a city girl, she could easily be mistaken for a young woman from the country.”
Rosalia’s first album, Los Angeles, Released in 2017 while she was still at conservatory, it’s a semi-traditional flamenco album that features a former punk musician on guitar (Raül Refree) and a cover of Will Oldham’s “I See a Darkness.” her second, El Mar Guil, A hybrid of flamenco pop music, originally her BA thesis, based on a 13th-century Occitan novel called Flamenco This includes a song that interpolates Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River.” (It won a Grammy for Best Latin Rock Album and a Latin Grammy for Album of the Year.)
Because her first two albums relied on guitars, her third album was guitar-less, Yuan Si, It’s a loop-heavy experiment in which she jumps from reggae and jazz to trap and bachata, references Lil’ Kim and MIA, and, on “Bizcochito,” lets us know: “My career wasn’t built on hits/I got the hits because I laid the foundation.” (She won another Grammy for Best Latin Rock Album, as well as four Latin Grammys.)
Enter lux, Rosalia instituted a new rule: no looping. She wants to spend less time in front of the computer, use her instrument more, and really Sing.
“I hope it is Very interesting,“The physical state of the music,” she said. That could be an instrument, an object. It can be human. It can be air, metal, wood. In a way, I feel like the orchestra is probably the most monumental version. The physical form of music. “
