Fermín Cabanillas I Seville, June 16 (EFE).- Antonio Mellado Escalona’s “Zenet” attracts many things. At first, he arrives at the interview alone. It is something extremely rare that an artist does not arrive accompanied by someone who precedes him in the greeting, but this man from Malaga is “strange” even in this, a singer who, he says, “in department stores they don’t know where to put my records”.
A week ago he released his new work, ‘La estación del momento’, a CD/LP that, he says, has “many layers, many nooks and crannies”, on which he has worked “very architecturally”, until he got one of his great dreams: to give voice to contemporary poets with his way of seeing musical notes and show it to the public through his vocal cords.
Juanlu Mora, Alexis Díaz Pimienta, Magdalena Lasala, Antonio Romera “Chipi”, Tito Muñoz, Jonathan Pocoví, Nica Sobri, Steward Mundini and Manuel Francisco Reina have contributed their poems and Zenet has turned them into themes ranging from the most friendly pop to “New soul” or Hip Hop.
The most classic genres
Curiously, it is difficult for him to answer the first question when EFE asks him to define his own album: “I hadn’t even stopped to think about that,” he admits, but he does point out that it is “modern in that its context uses elements such as electronics, but it does not stop having the fundamental pieces of the most classic genres, such as soul, jazz or a good trumpet solo”, which has “the same dose of risk as conservatism”.
“I have measured very well that the electronics, the new color palette that we have used, were at the service of the organic”, he points out, and recalls how this album was born: “I commented that I wanted to do a bolero research project, an album of duets and one with poets getting into electronics a bit”, so when they gave him a choice between one of them, “I decided to do all three”.
The first was ‘Guapería’, awarded by the Cuban Institute of Music, the second ‘Zenetianos’, created in a pandemic “and uploaded to social networks for free”, and then he began to put his “passion” for poetry on paper, since he confesses “very pro of the Generation of 27”, but “I had to soak up a bit of what is being done today”.
Carrying out ‘La estación del momento’ has been possible “after years buying a lot of poetry, researching a lot…”, and to achieve this, he highlights that he has relied on one of the poets who participates in his work, Francisco Reina, who has opened eyes to the world of contemporary authors, because “a lot of poetry is made, and not all of it is good”, and he stops to highlight the contribution of Magdalena Lasala (Zaragoza, 1958), “the oldest” on the record, with which has recorded ‘Amarte’, the song “with the greatest sensual charge”.
Closed dates of concerts
He once again stresses that the versatility of his work causes more than one headache when placing his records on store shelves: “They don’t know if it’s pop rock, jazz, a melodic song… The last time they put me on Raphael’s side”, and that releasing a physical album is almost for “heroes” today, but that does not make him back down, especially since he brings his own love of “having things in his hands” to music.
Possibly, the CD “in a little while will disappear as a music support, but the booklet will prevail because it contains information, and we like to touch things”, and that same argument transfers him, as a tireless reader, to his books, of which he says that he likes to “underline, touch, paint a little star on them…”, because the electronic format screen “does not subjugate me”.
What subjugates him, and a lot, is putting himself in front of his audience, and he already has closed dates: June 27 in Madrid, 29 in Morón de la Frontera (Seville) and July 10 at the Córdoba Guitar Festival. . After passing through “the Americas”, with Mexico as the first stop, he has announced his presence at the Cartuja Center in Seville on November 5. EFE