The Anaquim appear in 2010 in the city of Coimbra, with a debut album, "The Lives of Others", which immediately catapulted them to national fame, but whose success has already crossed borders thanks to its peculiar sonority resulting from a fusion of sounds of the world, with a very Portuguese touch. Last year they released their third album, much calmer and bucolic as defined by the founder, songwriter of the band, José Rebola.
In terms of the Anaquim, on the third album "one of these days" do you notice an evolution in terms of the remaining two recordings that have already been released as a band?
José Rebola: I think that in this album there is always a very own evolution and dynamics, we tried that each album conveys a certain feeling and that is what has changed in relation to the other two albums, because "one of these days" has a thread. Our first record was a kind of collection of chronicles, the second was a more social album, focused more on the issues of society and the self. This third work is different because it touches on the affections, the love, the lack of love, the encounter and mismatch of the people. So it's a more contemplative, calmer, more bucolic album, the idea was always the minimalism of the songs, a certain decrease in the amount of lyrics and the speed of some things, that's basically what has changed.
This is still a voyeuristic work, because your themes focus on others and everything that happens around them and you said that this album is more contemplative and bucolic.
JR: I think that when we look at what is around us and at others, we also see what is in us in this circumstance, in the society that surrounds us, and the opposite. I think that looking inside is not only looking inside and looking out is never just looking out, what happens when I write lyrics to the ankle is this conjugation of the meeting points that we found between myself and others, the interior and the exterior in that sense I think it continues and will continue to happen.
By tackling the lyrics of the songs, you just mention that they are more contained, more concise, did you find an evolution of your writing on this album in relation to the rest?
JR: When I was referring being more restrained, I was addressing the total amount of lyrics and what is charged per second. In a more demanding, more interventional song, we want to say a lot and very quickly, when talking about love and solitude I think it is natural to have a certain breathing, a certain pause and that is what I feel in these songs. What does not diminish the intensity of the lyrics and what they carry, is that it does not only matter what is said, nor how you say it and in this album things are said in a softer, more leisurely way that goes to meet nature of messages that we are passing.
Is there any theme that is the summary of all this? That it is emblematic of "one of these days"?
JR: I think the song that spends the most this message and can handle almost every other theme of the album is perhaps "the road" and there it is not a very contained lyrics, it is the greatest of all, but as it is a sort of travel we can manage and be the motto of the remaining themes of the album.
Sometimes the Anaquim debut songs in the concerts that later insert in the albums, it happened the same in "one of these days"?
JR: It happened with one or two themes, but no more than that. Even because in the recording process only the themes undergo a metamorphosis and turn out to be different from what we had in mind. So, presenting the songs before the performance only happened once or twice.
In relation to the melodies, you incorporate many genres, which are not of a so-called Portuguese sound, are very disparate. Where did you seek influences from the Jewish klezmer, the bluegrass and the Greek rembetika that are not well-known musicalities of the Portuguese public?
JR: That's true, but I've always heard a lot of different music. Anaquim comes when I was in another rock band, more turned to punk rock and I started to have ideas that did not fit in that universe, so I was recording and writing it. As it was a composition so spaced the songs were very different, which did not mean that there were not some contact points, through very strong and marked rhythms. What happens is what we see with the sound of many musicians who take in traditional Portuguese music and show it and has a place in the world, we make a contrary process we bring the music of the world and we prove that it fits in Portugal. The themes we write in Portuguese and our way of making music, can also be in bluegrass, as with Balkan rhythms, or Jews, or Greeks, you can have it all. What we want is not only to show that Portugal has a place in the world, but also to show that all the cauldron of the world takes place in our country and with a Portuguese feeling.
Have you not heard criticisms in this sense of the so-called Portuguese musical purists?
JR: It does not happen much, because the way of being of a band is not only the melody or the music we make, it's the lyrics, the attitude, the covered themes, the posture and I think we're very Portuguese in that and we're going seek many Portuguese things. Moreover everything turns out to be a vicious circle in which all the genres of musicals are going to drink each other, the fado has very contact with the Arab music, there are others who think that it has a strong Neapolitan component. Basically we're all going to get things from one to another and adapt them our way. In this sense we have tried to show that everything can be Portuguese music, perhaps not in the more traditional canons, but we do not feel this criticism very much.
Do you think Portuguese music likes it self and the audience is a reflection of that? Or is there still a way to go?
JR: I think that Portuguese music, and more in particular that done in Portuguese, has benefited from a change in the attitude of the media and the public in general, in relation to itself. We have come to realize in the last 10 years that people approach Portuguese music with other ears and that it is no longer so "tacky" and that fortunately has already disappeared, or is quite minimized. We have the notion that the public has more attention to the lyrics, a greater openness and a minor prejudice in relation to the Portuguese musical projects in the national stages. Now, our country does not allow a giant stream of musicalities as a nation as the US, this does not happen, unfortunately. But, we feel that Portuguese bands have won a lot of public in their domestic market.
And your projection as a band? Do you notice that they are more recognized outside of Coimbra?
JR: We've been lucky enough to play, win fans and friends everywhere we play. And we noticed that these people act as "agents of promotion of the band", because despite everything still lives much of this word-of-mouth and we feel that our base of support is widening and even more than that, we already had the luck to tour Africa, we went to Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa and in March we go to the Lion. We feel that we are fulfilling a cross-border where our music is well accepted.
