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Interview
1 March 2015 2.00 h

'The challenge is finding new bands'

The Black Music Festival began as a night of blues in 2002 and hasn't stopped growing since

What's your ex­pe­ri­ence with Eng­lish?
I started Eng­lish at uni­ver­sity as I was study­ing to be­come a pri­mary school teacher and one spe­cial­ity was Eng­lish. But I never worked as a teacher be­cause I had a band and pref­ered to play music. So the Eng­lish I learnt at uni­ver­sity be­came a tool for work­ing in music man­age­ment and pro­duc­ing fes­ti­vals. My job is to close deals with artists and most of them are in­ter­na­tional so their man­agers tend to speak Eng­lish.
Do you have to travel a lot in your job as BMF or­gan­iser?
Trav­el­ling is im­por­tant to meet in­ter­na­tional artists and see other fes­ti­vals. My spe­cial­ity is black music, which we've not had a lot of in Cat­alo­nia. Our job is not only to pro­gramme big stars but, most im­por­tantly, to find emerg­ing artists, who might be well-known in New Or­leans, for in­stance, but who are to­tally un­known here.
How did you go from al­most be­com­ing a teacher to mu­si­cian to tak­ing charge of the BMF?
It's been a long road. I first had a Cata­lan rock band and then started work­ing with a man­age­ment com­pany, doing pro­duc­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and other tasks. Years later, we opened a con­cert venue in Salt –La Mirona– and that's when I re­alised that what I wanted was to work in con­cert venues and so I went in that di­rec­tion. We were deal­ing with all kinds of con­certs, from rock and salsa, to folk and punk. But we had the idea of doing some­thing dif­fer­ent that re­flected what we en­joyed. We first had the idea of a blues fes­ti­val. But, in 2002 there were a lot of blues and jazz fes­ti­vals. We liked black music so we thought it might be a good idea to focus on blues, soul, funk, R&B, hip-hop and so the BMF began.
Has the ex­pe­ri­ence of being a mu­si­cian helped you?
It was use­ful be­cause you know what it means to be on stage, as well as hav­ing a knowl­edge of music. I was a rock'n'roll mu­si­cian, but I was in­ter­ested in learn­ing about other mu­si­cal styles. Being a mu­si­cian was the best train­ing for my cur­rent job. Now there are uni­ver­sity de­grees in cul­tural pro­gram­ming but 20 years ago we learnt on the job. Most peo­ple in pro­duc­ing are or have been mu­si­cians.
So how did BMF start?
It has been an an­nual event since the first edi­tion. The first year was a trial to see what hap­pened with blues. We did one night of blues and it was very suc­cess­ful; peo­ple asked for more. The fol­low­ing year we did a week­end, then two week­ends, and started bring­ing in in­ter­na­tional artists. It has grown ever since, with more artists, a big­ger pro­file and bud­get. At first, this music wasn't on the radio and so it wasn't so pop­u­lar. But in time peo­ple's in­ter­est in­creased until 2006, when there was a big in­ter­na­tional boom in black music with Amy Wine­house, Duffy, Eli Pa­per­boy Reed. Soul was the music of the mo­ment and many bands in Cat­alo­nia started to play this style. Now we have the prob­lem that there are too many Cata­lan bands who want to take part in the fes­ti­val but there aren't enough stages for all of them.
What's the pro­por­tion of for­eign acts to do­mes­tic acts?
Sixty per cent local bands to forty per cent in­ter­na­tional acts. Every­one wants the top in­ter­na­tional artists, such as Maceo P arker, but the chal­lenge is for peo­ple to dis­cover new bands.
And this year's BMF?
It starts on Feb­ru­ary 28 and lasts until March 21. We have Maceo Parker, Richard Bona, Eli Pa­per­boy Reed, The Coup, Miles Sanko and Cata­lan artists, such as Fun­dación Toni Manero, Frank Knurf, The Gramo­phone All­stars Big Band, among oth­ers. It's all on our web­site (www black­mu­sicfes­ti­val.com). It takes place in dif­fer­ent venues, in­side and out­side. It's a good op­por­tu­nity to travel to Girona and Salt and dis­cover the city's land­scape and gas­tron­omy while lis­ten­ing to good music.
Are you al­ready look­ing ahead at next year?
The work never stops, es­pe­cially with in­ter­na­tional artists, who have tours. It's like doing a puz­zle fit­ting in all the dates, venues and music gen­res.
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