Staying in tune

It's often said said that most people stay faithful to the music they first fell in love with as teenagers. For most of us, those formative tracks are added to as we pass through our twenties and thirties, but that's where it stops. That doesn’t mean we never pick up new bands or singers, but we usually stick to our core favourites from those key decades and just bolt on a few extras later.

At every stage, and I would suppose in every culture, life inevitably becomes a series of tasks. Whether it is swotting for exams, braving the daily commute, walking a couple of kilometres to the nearest well, or just tackling the laundry, these chores dominate our time. Even when we try to buy time by paying someone else to lighten the burden, other tasks creep in. Even pleasurable experiences, like going on holiday, can become irksome as you fight airline schedules or some hotel booking site. Our habits may shift over time—trading a Friday night pint at the pub in our youth for a takeaway and a Netflix series in our later years—yet we still bind ourselves with little routines.

The problem comes down to the Earth's axis, or rather that spinning motion combined with the orbit our planet takes around the sun. We turn that motion into something we call time and then time takes over as we spend it, or pass it, or don't have enough of it. Even when the monster of work is far behind us—and while the salary was useful, it certainly swallowed our time—we still find our minutes guzzled up by those everyday demands. We try to be time-efficient; we "multitask" by cooking as we catch up with a podcast, or ironing in front of a film. But so many things require undivided attention. You can read a book in a doctor's waiting room, but I certainly wouldn't recommend literary pursuits while driving.

With our days so heavily structured, it is incredibly easy for our music tastes to become just as repetitive as our routines. Now, I have absolutely nothing against Queen, ABBA, Radiohead, or Lady Gaga, but I flatly refuse to be constrained by the same core playlist for the rest of my days. I decided to make a conscious effort to seek out something new, even if it meant hearing less of Neil Young or The Cure.

The impetus for this was partly because I moved to another country and suddenly I didn't share a cultural history. Fortunately, the music industry is nowhere near as monolithic as it once was. Without Parlophone and George Martin, The Beatles might never have broken through. Today, however, it is cheap and easy for artists to publish on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, or Bandcamp, where algorithms actively promote them to new audiences. Once you find the right sources of information, the music finds you.

I suppose the original idea was to end up knowing something about the music that was happening in Spain to help with my integration. I expected to finish up with the established stars or the big new names. Somehow, though, my attention drifted and I seem to have ended up with mostly independent, new, and relatively unknown bands and singers. I've been doing that for so long now that some have gone on to become big names, while others have even come full circle and broken up—bands like Izal, and (nearly) Vetusta Morla. I have to be honest, though, and say that I still can't mouth along to a single track without faltering, and I often struggle to understand the lyrics or even recognise the artists I've bought, but I persist anyway.

I generally still buy the music, but as MP3s rather than anything tangible, and my collection remains pretty eclectic. So far this year, I've picked up established names like Rosalía, been swayed by the hype around acts such as Guitarricadelafuente, continued to collect tracks from very "normal" sounding bands like Repion and stuck with that bouncy, independent, ever so Spanish sound of Toldos Verdes, Pipiolas, and Ginebras. It doesn't mean I've left British music out, either. Wolf Alice, PVA, and Raye all got added to the rotation this year. There have also been artists who sound quite mainstream to me, like Natalia Lacunza, along with a foray into names that I keep hearing and felt I really should try, like Bad Gyal and Bad Bunny.

One thing I have noticed is how much recent Spanish music, music that I've bought, borrows from older traditions without simply reproducing them. Cristina Len mixes traditional Castilla y León folk with electronic beats, just as Fillas de Cassandra does with Galician music. María José Llergo, María del Tango, and María Terremoto all seem to be taking flamenco in slightly different directions. I'm not sure quite what Sofía Comas's roots are, but she too seems to have been pinching older rhythms and making them her own.

But amongst all these discoveries, one independent band I stumbled upon is called La 126. They are three young women from nearby Elche who get the occasional spin on alternative radio stations. Actually, I've seen them live too; they were the support band to Alcalá Norte. I remember that they actually ran out of songs during their set and couldn't do an encore. They still haven't released a full album yet, but they have put out an EP, so they must be close. Because I follow them on a couple of platforms, their algorithm correctly spotted me as a prime target for their new merchandise line and targeted me with a T-shirt sales pitch. Naturally, I bought one. After a production hiccup and an email apologising for the delay, the package finally arrived.

In the traditional Spanish style, the envelope included a return address belonging to one of the band members. The mailing label was printed, but the return address was handwritten. Inside, alongside the shirt, they had tucked a few stickers and a little note on a small card: "Many thanks, Chris, for supporting us and buying the shirt." It's obviously still at the cottage industry stage.

They clearly have a long way to go before they are selling out massive arenas, but if they do, I’ll be able to say I saw them when they only had eight songs and they sold their own merchandise.

So perhaps the plan has worked after all, and it isn’t just the same old stuff from my youth. Then again, I did hear a dreadful cover of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” by some hip young band on a programme I listen to for source material the other day