Hi everyone, we are here talking about music and about Rock´n´Roll, and participating in a fascinating project
because I am also a Black Hero
Hello everyone, I´m Mariano Muniesa and I´ve been working in music journalism since the end of the 80s
I´ve written in journals like Popular 1, Heavy Rock, Kerrang! or Rock Hard and I´ve worked in the radio
making shows for many years like Rockstar in 40principales, that now I make here in Mariskalrock.com
and more recently in Madrid a 400 grados, which is the latest radio show that I´m doing in M21.
It depends on each case and on each person. I think that it has changed many people´s life, my life for example.
Because music changed my life. It got me seriously to think about what I wanted to do with my life and what I
wanted to become. Music were always there. When I was 11-12 years old music - mainly Rock- poisoned me,
it shocked me with its stinger and once it got into me, it was cristal clear that my life was going to be related to
music as a musician, journalist, manager, dealer or something related to music.
So as I said, music changed my life as it has changed the life of those who have decided to take a guitar
and play, to those who has decided to sing or to make radio and to those who has thrown themself into music.
Although to some people this never happens, most of us cannot imagine life without music.
Everyone can associate a song to a girl or to a boyfriend, to a moment in life. We all have a particular soundtrack
since childhood to maturity. So in this aspect music changed the life of many people professionally or
from a vital point of view but to others music is always there, and everyone can associate moments
and persons to some kind of music.
Regarding the musician´s responsability in the musical crisis, I lean on the base of a severe problem:
the absent capacity of the musicians, at least here in Spain, to organize themselves. In other countries,
musicians have constituted solid professional organizations and strong trade unions to fight for
their rights, they have known how to overcome to demand their concessions getting over the hard times.
In Spain, although artistic sectors like Actors have known how to organize in strong and powerful trade
union, with negociation and activity capacity, unfortunately musicians never had that tendency.
Specially Rock musicians, they have always talken the middle way with an individualistic point of view
that sometimes can be considered selfish. Unquestionably, musicians don´t have a huge
responsability in the industry crisis, obviously the record companies have the responsability there since they
never have been able to have a future view about what was going to come, and that kept using S. XX recipes
to problems of the S. XXI, and also by the authorities that never made an interesting and intelligent politic
to protect author rights. So to sum up, there have been many factors contributing to the current musical crisis.
Specifically, musicians doesn´t have a lot of responsability in the crisis but they have to assume
their responsability in the lack of labour rights, economic rights, all the precariousness that musicians suffer
is due to their lack of will to organize as a colective and to associate to overcome this problems.
I am convinced, specially nowadays with the abundance of information, of the needed of what is known
in journalism as a communication prescriber, someone who in base of his/her work, knowledge, the hours
dedicated to listening to music and to his/her journalistic labour is in the position of filtering
all the information. Without someone who can guinde to the listeners, for example in the radio or those who
listen to music, we may suffer the politics of the big musical corporations without any kind of resistance,
in that case they would educate the musical taste, create the musical culture and say what you have and
don´t have to listen. Obviously, the figure of the communication prescriber is not the ones of a professor
I mean, a prescriber is someone who works in the radio playing CDs, talks about them and give advise to buy
them or listen to them taking into account your musical taste, he/she never give a demonstration about
what you have to follow 100%, but it always serve as an orientation in the huge abundance of offers that
we can find nowadays in music. It´s the same for musical critics in press and those who, from journalism,
try to filter all the information in a labour that is more necessary than ever.
Contrary to what happened some years ago, mainly in the 80s and 90s, today the Spanish musical Rock scene
is really well considered outside our country. We have many international bands in the european market, for
example Angelus Apatrida have been the supporting band of Slayer at "La Riviera"in Madrid, this
is a band that years ago signed an agreement with an important international record label, that tour around
the world and that is situated at the same level than English ones. This can be one of the most representative
examples but we have many others, mainly in Latin America there is an importan presence of Spanish Rock
bands, groups are touring in Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, and for example Mago de Öz are touring
more often in EEUU than in Europe. So we could say that we have broken barriers and the presence of Spanish
musicians and bands in the international market is common. Perhaps here in Spain we don´t dare about it,
and we don´t pay much attention to this. We are usually amazed with the foreign bands, that bring many qualities
and a strong background, this is a music that we have to be grateful for and enjoy, but we have to be awared
that Spanish music is day by day more introduced abroad, have more presence in the international market
and above all the pending issue is to build a bridge between Spain and Latin America. Spanish and Latin
Rock can have a huge capacity to compete with the english market, but we need to organize, we need to have
sense of community even hispanic community, we need a collective direction to hold on and support each
other. Latin bands that comes to Spain don´t always have the same reception as what happens with the
Spanish bands that go there, and this is a great problem to solve.
The format changes in music have two different dimensions. First, the most severe and awkward,
is the lost of technical quailty in music. This problem happened in the transition from vinyl to CD,
CD necessarily compress the sound and some shades are lost. The example that I always use is the
"Sticky Fingers" album from the Rolling Stones. For me, the sound is not the same between the 180 grams vinyl
that I bought many years ago in the 70s, and that to me has a special spell, that the album that I have listened
in CD, in fact I think that I have listened Stiky Fingers in CD around three times and no more because it
doesn´t have the same sound to me. If we talk about the transition to mp3 this loss in technical
quality increases. One of the greatest problems is the lost of the creative essence of what the musician have
done, for example Neil Young has refused for years to publish his music on Spotify and not because the free
listening policy, but because he realized that many details of his music are lost in the streaming media,
guitars or drums that he recorded cannot be found there, so a work that he did in the studio
cannot be found in the streaming music. This is a very big problem and that´s why I don´t like to listen to
streming music. Regarding the physical format, perhaps our generation are missing it because we have been
musically educated with vinyl. To buy a vinyl was an adventure: to open it, to see the photographs inside,
all the ritual that implied a vinyl album including putting it into the turntable and cleaning the needle
was something related to the process of listening to music. Recent generations have not known that,
so they cannot miss it. Their way of life to enjoy music is mp3, iPad, cellular, sadly these generations have lost
technical quality in music and all the creative things beyond the 7-8 songs included in an album,
for example all the design work. It catches my eye that when a musician edits a CD he/she tries to make a
cover and back cover like if it was a vinyl, and this is a mistake because in that format the details are lost, you
can´t make a CD with the same fashion than a vinyl, it´s impossible. So in summary, digital formats have lost
details that were important to those who love music, but perhaps it´s what it´s meant to be, sincerely I don´t
know if this have any kind of solution but it´s possible that new generations may rediscover old formats,
this is what´s happening right now with the vinyl. I love to interview young bands in my radio show, people with
20-22 years old that have the solid intention to record their album in vinyl perhaps because they have seen it
in the record collections of their parents or because they have realized that a vinyl album is more attractive than
a spotify list. Hopefully this is a possible way.
I´m optimistic even though it sometimes brings me fustrations and upsets. In music it´s possible, perfectly
possible to improve the situation but it depends, from my point of view, of two things. First, as I previously said,
musicians need to realize that they are a labour sector and need to fight for their rights, with the capacity
to organize, to be generous and stop to think only in their own interest or how much are they personally going to
earn or if they can play in a festival after the cancellation of a band for less money. They need to have a collective
conscience, they need to demand a minimun and a determinant labour conditions, to me it´s incredible that
musicians are not fighting in the streets everyday to have a legal sick leave, there are some illness that affect
specially to musicians, for example the singers, that are not legally recognized as sick leaves. Musicians doesn´t
have right to be on the dole, better not to talk about pensions or in the case of women the problems that
a woman can have if she is pregnant to keep singing in an orchestra are enormous. And there is noone covering
this, there is no trade union supporting these women. So to me it´s indispensable if we want music to get better
and even to improve the social conception of it, that musicians make people respect them and respect the
music as an exercise that for sure is an art, but that is also a profession and a technique that needs to be paid
and protected by the state and by all the society. Regarding this, I would like to incise in something that
can be an interesting starting point: in the lower house in the Spanish Parliament, politics from Unidos Podemos
are working in the ellaboration of an artist regulation that includes some of the historical issues of the musical sector
This statute needs some time to be approved, probably it doesn´t cover all that it´s needed but for sure it´s
a first step that´s very important. I encourage everyone to know it, to all the professional sectors and specially
to musicians to incorporate their complaints, and to make this statute a useful tool in the future to dignify music in Spain.
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