Depedro: “I enjoy every opportunity to play, I was never in a position to choose”

Depedro, the solo project of Jair Zavala from Madrid, who has grown professionally with Amparo Sánchez (Amparanoia), La Vacazul and Caléxico, will premiere this Friday at 21:00 the new edition of the TerraCeo festival (open-air proposal Mar de Vigo auditorium using its roof terrace). Tickets have been sold out for more than a month.

—Open TerraCeo and start the festival season. What’s your schedule?

– I can’t complain. I live a sweet moment and always enjoy every phase I had to live through. In this present, where more people come to me, I am happy that I can share with the public what I do, and that they go home with a smile and something on their head.

— Do you like the festival format?

— I enjoy every opportunity to play. I was never in a position to prefer or choose one place or the other. I adapt, I think that’s one of the keys to enjoyment.

What will the audience find?

— I will play some songs from my last album, mercy machine, but I don’t forget the classics because if they don’t throw me into the pylon or in this case into the estuary. And the water is still very cold!

— Is Vigo telling you something special?

— I have many affinities with Vigo and Pontevedra. Places are very important, but more important are the people who inhabit them, who give them their personality and cultural identity. That link has been in the making for years. I am overwhelmed by the love that exists in Galicia for the Depedro project, I hope it will last for many more years because my heart has already stayed there.

— Coincidentally, the Eurovision Song Contest is also taking place this week. Are you interested in Depedro?

I didn’t know it was this week. I’m very interested in music, but show business I am ignorant. Maybe I’m missing something wonderful, I respect that and I don’t mind, but I’ve never been emotionally attached to it.

—The fact that you use a stage name helps you to distance yourself from your public aspect when you are Jairo and not Depedro, when you go on stage and when you walk down the street?

“In a way. Although I am very clear in my real life, Depedro was created as a project where at first I didn’t know if I would be the only one to be a part of it, and on the other hand, the truth is that in a way you lose your name. I have that immense happiness that my music belongs to the people, they feel it is theirs and it no longer belongs to me.

—And Depedro is very different from Jair?

— I think so, and in any case, we get along very well because we have no choice!

— A few days ago, we learned about the experience of a woman from Vigo who cooperates with the non-governmental organization Agua de Coco, in Madagascar, whom you also knew very well, right?

-That. I just came back and it was an amazing experience. I was there filming a documentary about how people live there and above all about the work of this non-governmental organization that puts you in your place in seconds. I’m still absorbing the experience and I hope that when the film is edited, it will reflect at least a little how we experienced all that flood of emotions. I’ve been traveling all over the planet all my life and Depedro has taken me to many amazing places, but I never expected that music would take me to Madagascar, a country suffering from hunger, devastated by drought.

—Does the experience include bringing other sounds into the coffin?

-A lots of. I also came with a few instruments from there and I went hand in hand with a musician called Kilema and it was a privilege. Even if it was only 16 or 17 days and the approach was superficial, it’s a place where very few people go.