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| Eva Amaral & Juan Aguirre |
Today, Claire Fontaine and The Grandma have gone to the Palau Sant Jordi in Montjuïc, Barcelona, to listen to Amaral, one of the most wonderful and amazing groups in current world music.
Claire and The Grandma love this duo because of their beautiful music, but especially their deep, poetrical and hermetic lyrics, full of social conscience, respect for diversity, care for the planet and hope in a better future for our humanity.
Claire and The Grandma like all songs, new and old ones, but today they strongly recommend the new album Salto al Color and a little treasure, not included in it, named Corren sung for the new disc of La Marató de TV3.
Thanks to Eva, Juan and all their team for coming to our city, for Camins, for Corren and for offering an impressive show full of great music and social conscience. Good luck with this new and awesome project.
We will continue walking into wild, being drops of a great sea and eyes of falcon, being respectful in diversity like fish of colours and believing in our revolution because it is our time and we are listening to the drums that announce it.
We are going to gallop to bury them in the sea. Let's go to jump to colour!
Before going to this unforgettable concert, The Grandma has read a new chapter of Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic.
Amaral is a music group from Zaragoza, Aragon hat has sold more than four million albums worldwide. The band consists of Eva Amaral (vocalist) and Juan Aguirre (guitarist), who write their songs together.
Eva and Juan met in 1992 in a bar in Zaragoza. She played drums in a local punk rock band called Bandera Blanca and also sang with Acid Rain. Aguirre was playing with a band called Días de Vino y Rosas at the time. Soon after they met, the two decided to play together and perform their own material. In 1997, they moved to Madrid and signed a major deal with EMI.
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| Claire & The Grandma enjoy Amaral |
Amaral's musical style is often called pop rock, but it is often fused with Latin beats, folk rock, synthesizers, complex poetic lyrics, and in particular, traditional Spanish folk music.
Their distinctive style was described by Juan as folk, and the person who has heard a lot of folk and traditional music will listen and understand, but I think our attitude to life is rather that of a rock group.
Juan Aguirre was born in Donostia, Guipúzcoa in the Basque Country. He spent his childhood in the town of Gros and currently resides in Zaragoza, while Eva originates from Zaragoza, Aragon.
The inspirations for their songs include cinema, friends, and literature. Amaral have won numerous awards including the MTV Europe Music Award for their 2002 album Estrella de mar, which was nominated for 5 other categories, and are one of the best-selling Spanish groups of all time.
As of 2019, they have released eight studio albums, one (double) live album, and two live DVDs. According to Eva, they are a libertarian group that doesn’t think of music as a conquest or a competition... We chose music as a way to break a lifestyle that we didn’t like and a society that we don't understand.
Eva María Amaral Lallana (4 August 1972) is a Spanish singer-songwriter, and a member of the group Amaral with Juan Aguirre.
She studied sculpture studies at the Art School of Zaragoza. During this time, she was a member of the band Bandera Blanca, where she was the drummer. In 1993, she met the guitarist Juan Aguirre, who was a member of the band Días De Vino Y Rosas. Together, they created the band Amaral. They moved to Madrid and later signed a contract with Virgin Records.
They have recorded six successful studio albums and have performed as tour support for Lenny Kravitz's Spanish concerts. Their song Rosa de la Paz was included in a record to support Prestige boat victims, also performing at the Nunca Máis demonstration in Madrid. Moby performs along with Eva Amaral on the song Escapar, the Spanish version of the Amaral song Slipping Away. Beto Cuevas, front man with the Chilean band La Ley joins Amaral on their song Te Necesito. Pájaros En La Cabeza is their most famous album.
Even though some people believe that she was born in 1973, she confirmed that she turned 40 in 2012. I just turned 40 and I feel much more secure and stronger than 20 years ago.
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| Juan Aguirre & Eva Amaral |
She claims that she had a joyful childhood and that she never liked to play with dolls. Instead, she would play music with her cousin. She declares that she is shy and that as a teenager, she felt like a weirdo and had many insecurities.
At a very young age, she started to play the drums in a self-taught way and she did not think she could sing until she started to do it and realized that it was a much more powerful way to communicate than the drums.
She studied in Zaragoza at the school Romareda. Afterwards, she studied volume techniques in the art school of Zaragoza. Meanwhile, she also worked as a bartender in Azul Rock Café. She began to study lyrical singing when she realized that she wanted to become a singer. First, she took lessons in a civic center, but the teacher was fascinated by her voice and she sent her to her master. Her lessons were very expensive and I did not have much money… She was asked to audition and the master admitted her with a discount.
Eva and Juan met in 1992 at the back of a bar in Zaragoza. At that time, she played the drums in a local punk-rock band called Bandera Blanca and was also the leader single of another band called Lluvia Ácida.
From the beginning, there was love, friendship and music between the two of them. They went through all the bars performing. They were together for five years before it all started. After that, they began to do some sporadic trips to Madrid and then they started to stay there a little longer, sleeping at friends' places, working in the catering industry and much more while they performed in Libertad 8, San Mateo 6, El Rincón del Arte Nuevo and La Boca del Lobo.
One day, Jesús Ordovás invited them to Radio 3 and sometime later, a guy from the Virgin company attended one of their concerts and decided to work with them. Then, someday in 1997, they made the decision of staying in Madrid.
In 1998, Eva and Juan signed with the company Virgin-EMI and on 18 May, their first album was released. They called it Amaral and it was produced by Pancho Varona and Paco Bastante. The name of the band was Juan's idea, who took Eva's last name, even though she did not like it at first.
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| Claire & The Grandma ready to listen to Amaral |
In 2000, after touring to present her first album, she recorded her second one in London. It was called Una pequeña parte del mundo (A small part of the world) and it contained 13 songs, 12 written by the band and a version of the song Nada de nada by Cecilia.
This time, the album was produced by Cameron Jenkins, who also worked with The Rolling Stones, George Michael and Elvis Costello. Eva met him on the recording of an Enrique Bunbury’s album, on which she collaborated. Cameron loved her extraordinary voice since the first time he heard it and he proposed the band to work with him. Jenkins produced all their albums until 2008.
In 2001, Eva Amaral was given the title of honorary citizen by the local government of Zaragoza.
The band recorded in London their third album, called Estrella de mar (Starfish). This was the best seller in Spain in 2002 and the most successful album of the band so far, having sold more than 2 million copies. The album appears as the number 24 on the list The 50 best Spanish rock albums, made by the magazine Rolling Stone. They did a tour for two years where they gave more than 200 concerts and they played as supporting band in a concert of Lenny Kravitz. Furthermore, in 2003, Eva played the leading role in a short film by Andreu Castro called Flores para Maika (Flowers for Maika).
In November 2004, Eva and Juan left to London, where they recorded their fourth album, called Pájaros en la cabeza (Birds in the head). The album was released in 14 May 2005 and they started the tour in June in Salamanca. Afterwards, they continued the tour in Mexico, Chile and Argentina.
Amaral made a stop in Barcelona to record the concert and release it on DVD. It was called El comienzo del big bang (The beginning of the big bang). Pájaros en la cabeza was the most sold album in Spain in 2005.
Eva and Juan remember this period as a difficult time. After 'Pájaros en la cabeza' we toured and it was a long and hard phase. It was all too much to handle. Suddenly, there was a lot of people around us who made us be worried about a lot more things than music, so we decided to detach ourselves from all that. We wanted to reflect on it and live a little", says Eva. Eva has shown me that she is very brave and she stays true to herself, against the interests of the market, claims Juan.
The tour of Pájaros en la cabeza turned into a nightmare, so they decided to give fewer concerts on the following tour, and with a band formed by friends, not by professional musicians. Juan declares that they needed to go back to their origins and Eva adds that they have lived a complete regression.
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| Juan Aguirre & Eva Amaral |
In the summer of 2007, while Gato negro-Dragón rojo was being recorded, Eva Amaral's mother died and the singer was not feeling strong enough to continue. First, I thought that by locking myself in the studio I would get through it, but it was not that easy. But here we are, still standing on our feet, thanks to Juan, who really supported me". And Eva continues We thought about quitting. We did not do it, but we thought about it. Juan also confirms that they almost quit It was a bad time and we thought that maybe this was not making us happy. We liked to make music but we did not like to be public figures. There are some things that happen to you that turn you into something like a puppet, like the one on the cover of 'Pájaros en la cabeza'.
During these bad days, the producer Scott Litt had just replied to an email that Juan had sent him before. We had sent him a song and he said that the voice sounded amazing and he wanted to see us. I was freaking out, I thought it was a joke, says Juan. Scott moved to Madrid, where he worked for a couple of weeks with the band. But Juan and Eva could not get over the personal downturn so they explained it to Scott and he understood it and stopped the project. We thought that if you do something, you have to do it with all your heart and that was not our best time. We would rather lick our wounds on our own, we care more about ourselves than the band, continues Juan.
Finally, Eva and Juan started the year 2008 making a version of A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall by Bob Dylan, the promotional song for the Expo Zaragoza 2008. The name of the version was Llegará la tormenta.
On 27 May 2008 was released the fifth album of the duo from Zaragoza with the title Gato negro-Dragón rojo, a double disc with 19 songs. The tour 2008 started in Zaragoza in December 2008. They were accompanied by a new band, formed by Coki Giménez (drums), Zulaima Boheto (cello), Octavio Vinck (acoustic guitar), Iván González (bass guitar) and Quique Mavilla (keyboard).
On 2009, they had another tour that started in March in the Palau de la Música in Barcelona, a concert that was included on the Guitar Festival of the city. On July 2009, they participated in the concert of MTV Spain Murcia Night, celebrated in Cartagena by the wall of Carlos III and for more than 35.000 people.
On 22 September 2009, closing the Gato negro-Dragón rojo cycle, Amaral published a double CD+DVD/Blu-Ray named La barrera del sonido, which includes the concert recorded in the Palacio de los Deportes in Madrid in October 2008, closing like this a season to start a new band with the next studio album.
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| Salto al Color by Amaral |
With Gato negro-Dragón rojo they started to self-manage their own songs.
It's an idea that came up in 2006 and we started doing in 2007. This year we've seen that it has caused interest. For us, it is a step forward [...] It's something that comes from long ago. We started the path of self-management with 'Gato negro-Dragón rojo', but the idea that we had was already from many years ago. We had our ideal world where everyone can just manage themselves and keep everything more familiar. As I was saying, we started the last CD with our own brand but it was distributed by EMI but this year we've taken another step. The distribution is done by a small Spanish company and the truth is, we are very happy. We don't have any kind of problem with EMI, in fact, we still have a good relationship with them.
Hacia lo salvaje is the name of the sixth album by the band, released on 27 September 2011, already under the new brand created for the band, called Antártida and also produced by herself, Juan Aguirre and Juan de Dios Martín.
Eva explains the name of the brand saying that since we edited the CD with our own brand, it turned out that we didn't have a name because we are a bit of a mess. We also didn't care if it was our brand or Pepito Records. We decided to name it 'Antártida' because we were recording that song in the moment and it gave us the idea. We loved the image of the Antarctica, a completely imagined place as we've never been there. However, we loved the whiteness, something so pure and so real that it dazzles you. It also reminded us of that blank paper you have to face every time you start to write a song.
The presentation tour began in Zaragoza 6 October, where they performed five concerts in a row with all tickets sold out. Hacia lo salvaje was chosen as the third most important Spanish CD of 2011 by the Rolling Stone magazine.
In 2017, Amaral released Nocturnal, the seventh album by the band, and in 2019, Salto al
Color, the last album of the duo.
We are too many and they can not pass
Above the years we had to shut up
For forbidden books and secret entries...
Amaral
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