Fernando Alfaro: “Before, being ‘indie’ was a matter for misfits” | Culture

In the late eighties, Fernando Alfaro was a pioneer of indie Spanish singer at the head of Surfin’ Bichos. In this band, in the Chucho group or his solo project, he has always shaped his own universe of uprooted characters, who now come to life in a novel, Turbid world (Contra). Educated and calm, this man from Albacete chats in the café of the Círculo de Bellas, in Madrid, like a born “survivor” of life and culture.

AskThe book begins with an epigraph that says: “Life will be cruel and fleeting.” To what extent do you think it is?

Answer. The phrase, which functions as a quote and opens the book, refers to the entire novel, to its narrative tempo. It deals with the entire life of several characters, with a protagonist, Ángel Turbio, in just over 250 pages. The result must be that the pace of the novel is high, which is what I was looking for; my own pace was also high when writing it. It deals with characters who live their lives with a certain haste, a kind of desperation. Like an adventure novel, of course. It is therefore also a bloody story, if not gruesome, like crime novels.

P. In his case it has been bloody and fleeting.

R. In a different sense from that of the novel’s protagonist, perhaps yes. I say different because, despite some points in common, there are many biographical features of Ángel that I do not share. But it is true that I decided to have a fast pace in the narrative very early on, because the first thing I did was collect and organize all the lyrics of my songs (also, curiously, a little more than 250), which are also included at the end of the book. And those songs are my whole life. It was like watching my life flash by. That vertigo.

P. Loneliness plays a role in the novel, but so does religion.

R. Among other things, Turbid world It is the story of how, in the end, Angel always ends up alone. And it is true that this introspection that characterizes him feeds and feeds on his tendency to solitude… and his tendency to the transcendental, which is articulated in his early years in a religion, the Catholic religion, but which later remains and runs through his life like an underground river, a “beatific current” and a love for his neighbor that surfaces, above all, when he takes drugs, particularly heroin.

P. Are you a believer?

R. I would like to believe, yes. To believe that there is a meaning to all this. It would be, as some Brazilian footballer says, to have a free psychologist (and on-linebecause you can connect at any time and from anywhere). I could joke about this, but in reality it is such an intimate question that I could not answer it… not even to myself.

P. It focuses on certain manual details, almost obsolete in the digital world and screens we live in. For example, how a slingshot is made.

R. There are detailed descriptions of how to build a slingshot or a bow, but then this “playing with sticks and stones” goes to another level and the descriptions are of things like the method for building a water pipe to smoke crack. These breaks or pauses in the narrative discourse with a description are a classic resource in novels. In this case, I was very interested in underlining that narrative vertigo that I alluded to by suddenly stopping time with almost microscopic descriptions of these “not very spiritual” issues, thus also suddenly leaving the introspective discourse.

P. Turbid world It’s a story of misfits and outcasts. Do the battered guys have a chance for redemption?

R. For those who do not believe in the afterlife or in eternal salvation, the only possible redemption is to survive. This word appears repeatedly in the novel, in this rarely used form (almost everyone uses only “survive”). This allows for a double semantic game with a new, invented meaning. As Angel says: “You are going to survive because you have a super life.” That is redemption.

P. You grew up in Albacete. Were there many Turbios and dented Ángeles there in your time?

R. The narrative of the novel is rather hyperrealistic, and it does talk about our country and our cities and towns, of course. It would be something like dirty and magical realism. The pleiad of characters (more or less invented) shady and battered but full of light that already inhabited my songs, of course comes from the real world. It was what I knew in Albacete, in Madrid, in Valencia, in Barcelona, ​​in my town, Alcadozo… And now they have come to life in the novel.

P. Has the Albacete of your childhood and adolescence changed much compared to the one you see now?

R. I think so, quite a lot. It is described very well in the novel. There is a passage that says: “It was a violent time like all times. But that one was more granitic: the city, or memory, was greyer and more obstinate, like concrete. Little room for poetry or for an age of flowers.” There are also moments in which a friendlier and brighter city is described, or one that was more to be discovered at that time.

P. Surfin’ Bichos came out of that land. Did you have to be a being like Ángel Turbio to be indie?

R. It’s just that in those times it indie It was really a matter of misfits. Of juvenile misfits a la Morrissey. What we knew of the indie came from post-punk, from the indie charts from the early eighties. And it connected with some of the crazy stuff that was being done in Australia, the UK and especially the US. I identified with Gun Club, Orange Juice, Violent Femmes… and also with Veneno.

P. Do you think that the collective memory of this country remembers and values ​​that first wave of independent music with groups like Surfin’ Bichos, Manta Ray, Niño Gusano…?

R. I don’t think so. The collective memory remembers at most one or two names, the most famous ones. People tend to have only one idea about each thing; that is often said in advertising.

P. Be indie was it cooler before than now?

R. Progressively, the word has been identified with a musical genre, a style. In this way, things have been introduced that neither imply the risk nor provide the stupor that they implied and provided back then.

P. He indie It is now a catch-all where everything fits in. How do you see it?

R. Instead, it is much more uniform than in other times. In theory it should mean freedom, break-up, emotional collapse, delusions, and things like that. Money, little; in the indie there was never much money.

P. What do you think of the current festival circuit?

R. Well, it seems that nowadays it is the big companies that organize festivals and the digital platforms that have taken over from the big record labels. Artists should not aspire to anything more than being “content creators”. Now everything is much more controlled. Subject and well-subjected.