INTERVIEW Jairo Zavala of Depedro

Friday July 23, 2010

from Gozamos

By Jose Luis Benavides

Thrilled by his native Spain’s World Cup win, Jairo Zavala apologetically jokes, “I’m the one responsible for Depedro.” After his recent show at Schubas in Chicago, Zavala talked with me about his early musical influences, his global principals and perspective, and of course, the music.

Like his world music record label, National Geographic Music, Depedro’s sound comes from his global family. Jairo’s grandfather lived in Equatorial Guinea, “a Spanish colony,” he notes. His family later emigrated to Spain, where Jairo was born. Raised by “hippy parents” in Madrid under dictatorship of the 70’s, listening to the stories and records of his families life in Africa, he spoke of his mother’s struggle to assimilate to Spanish culture, arriving from Africa “to a grey, closed country, a conservative country, in contrast to her oasis,” in the former Spanish Guinea. These early introductions to globalization and postcolonial observations inspired much of the style and intent behind Depedro. In college Jairo studied painting and started playing local bars and clubs. The music, Zavala notes in jest, “started taking a wrong turn, but it was good music anyways.

The conversation predominated in Spanish, but I interestingly noticed how after reciting the name of an English band (like Chicago-based friend, Andrew Bird and The Cat Empire who he had the fortune of playing with in Winnipeg, Canada for the Winnipeg Folk Festival) Zavala would start speaking in English, as if his brain hadn’t made the switch yet. Jairo would catch himself and switch back to Spanish. I asked why he sings songs for Depedro in English and Spanish, thinking he would speak to the bilingual nature of the diasporic Latin American communities in and outside of the Spanish speaking world. Jairo wittingly responds, “The album was recorded with a group from the U.S. (Calexico of Arizona) in order to ‘trick them’ and keep them more involved.”

Read the entire interview here

Chilla que Tiemble		Depedro
Como El Viento	4:00	Depedro

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Depedro - CNN
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