Bogotá burns: “We want to be a rock band” | Culture

Arde Bogotá has been one of the names that has been repeated the most on festival posters during the summer. The band, which released its first album in 2021, has spent much of the season on stage and will continue to do so until the end of the year, which will end in style at the WiZink Center in Madrid on December 13. In the middle of their tour, on September 16 they stopped in the capital to attend one of the meetings for EL PAÍS+ subscribers at the Teatros Luchana in Madrid.

Fernando Navarro, a journalist from EL PAÍS who moderated the meeting, immediately asked them about their “breakthrough moment.” In less than five years, the band has managed to become one of the most talked-about groups in Spain, with two nominations for the Latin Grammys, an Ondas award and six awards from the Academy of Music.

You might think that they have made a great leap from Cartagena (Murcia) to platinum records, but they boast otherwise. “For us it has been progressive because, although it has been very fast, we feel that we have taken all the steps,” confessed Dani Sánchez, guitarist.

Those who see them live can confirm that this is true with small gestures, such as the almost imperceptible second of suspense that occurs after they perform for the newspaper’s readers. The Dogswhen they wait expectantly without raising their heads to see if the audience will start applauding, as if they hadn’t already taken it for granted. That and, of course, the smile that appears on the four of them when finally their fans, some of whom have come from other cities, break into applause.

“This is only the second album of this band, we still have a lot to do”

The last step of this intense journey has been in the form of a song. An eight-minute song, The Picasso Towerwhich represents the first single off the album Cowboys of A3. Antonio García, the group’s singer, acknowledged that it had been a very risky bet (specifically, “a fifteen-point smoke”), but that it is having a lot of success and that this means that “there is still a lot to explore”. “It is only the second album of this band, we still have everything to do, everything we have thought about we have not yet had the time to do”, he added.

They also had a very loyal audience that puts them in a “privileged position” to launch a bet like this, which, they admit, also made them doubt even though they were clear about it: “I’m going to publish this, even if nobody listens to it, because on an artistic level we want this song to be present and, if nobody listens to it, we have four or five more concerts scheduled and the WiZink has already sold out,” the singer acknowledged, making the audience laugh.

Navarro referred to the song as “three songs in one” and took the opportunity to try to define and understand the sound of the band that, as a music journalist, he labels as rockalthough on digital platforms they appear on the lists of indie“Other people put labels on us and everyone uses the ones they think are appropriate, but we want to be a rock band,” Antonio agreed.

They dedicated a space in the conversation to commenting on the advantages of being a band. “Everything good and bad is shared and distributed,” said Dani. He referred to the bad reviews and the pressure, and confessed that not all the members of the team handle them in the same way, but that they bear the weight between the four of them.

Although they are now pairs, they did not all arrive at the same time. Pepe Esteban, the bass player; Jota Mercader, the drummer, and Dani Sánchez, the guitarist; first formed a band that was missing a singer. They recalled that first audition of García, the moment when they recruited “one of the great vocalists we have today,” according to Navarro. “It was the first time I went to a rehearsal room in my life, I arrived with a guitar that belonged to my sister (…) and I didn’t even know where to plug it in,” recalled the vocalist.

Although he seems insecure, from the other side they were clear. “I have a crush “With Antonio’s voice, it was automatic,” Jota acknowledged, while recalling the first WhatsApp audio in which he heard his partner’s voice, even before the audition, where they couldn’t “let him get away.” From that moment on, they rented a space by the hour and started rehearsing.

They admit that many things are still in the works, including bringing the energy of the live show to the studio. On stage they seem to feel more comfortable and confess that they take the live show “very, very seriously” and that they try to “make each concert shine”, but that they are not able to transfer that essence to the recordings in the studio.

“A very heterogeneous industry is developing and that is the great future of music”

To end the meeting, Navarro asked them about the future. Some of the bands that share their genre, such as Vetusta Morla, Niños Mutantes or Izal, have announced a break or a separation and the journalist pointed out that they had everything to “be a great band of this era”. They, on the other hand, do not see it that way. “I think there is a very cool musical scene in the country, despite the fact that bands as important as those you have named stop or disappear”, pointed out García. “There are a lot of bands that we share weekends with during the summer (…) that coexist, have their space and it makes sense. A very heterogeneous industry is developing and that is the great future of music”, he concluded.

The four boys from Cartagena are still trying to be who they want to be and they have no qualms about admitting that they are just starting out. Their audience couldn’t stop laughing with them during the conversation and they sang together, to finish, Cowboys of A3the song that gives its name to their second album and their tour, which will take them through Latin America during 2025.