Since he was 16 or 17 years old, he has been spending the summer on Formentera with friends. For Daniel Carbonell Heras, known worldwide as Macaco, Ibiza was just a place to pass through, although he believes that it is now at an interesting moment: “On the island there is a lot of desire for live music, something that gives the island a lot of truth and makes it shine. There are electronic music things that I like, I listen to all kinds of music, but the disco concept is not my thing.” He claims to be keen to get to know Ibiza better, largely as a result of the creation of the label and promoter House of Frequency by Diego Torán, his manager and great friend. “Diego and I have worked together for about 20 years. He was the artistic director of EMI and I had a small independent label, Mundo Zurdo, and I started making deals with other labels. When EMI merged, he became my manager. We have a very family-like relationship, he is a musician, we know each other very well and he is involved in every detail”.
It is precisely at the beautiful House of Frequency estate where we interviewed this artist with a lively style that he will be displaying tonight at Las Dalias. “I’ve always played there, we have a great vibe, it’s a very magical place”. For Macaco every performance there is like playing at home, and this time he also conquered by alternating danceable songs with more intimate ones: “I like to read the place, and where you play each song in a concert is fundamental. I’m very ‘monkey’, I love to dance, but if you suddenly slow down the rhythm you capture people’s attention, and in that swing of sensations is where I really feel most comfortable”. Macaco likes to surprise and challenge himself constantly, “I’ve never liked labels”.
He arrives tired but happy from a tour of Latin America that he describes as magical: “I felt like I was showing many different colours”, and he has some thirty concerts ahead of him this summer, but his head is shuffling through a huge number of other plans. “I have several visual-sound projects, still half-secret, but for which we are talking to several major platforms. During the pandemic I wrote a magical realism story that I want to co-direct, about a boy and a cardboard piano, a circular plot that has to do with nature, and the island gives a lot of scope to shoot this. But I want to see how I do it because it’s a lot of work and I want to have artistic freedom. Or maybe I’ll leave everything and go into a cave in Ibiza to meditate,” he concludes, laughing.
He is also working on another interesting project that combines music and image, but about which he asks for discretion. He also wants to put together three different formations, one with his life brother and guitarist Tirta, with whom he has been thinking about possible songs these days, another medium-format one with the musicians he has now brought to Ibiza, and another one for the big festivals. Nor does he rule out releasing a new album soon, as he has many songs in store, “like ‘Veo, Veo’, which is the most powerful song I’ve ever done in my life, half rapped”.
We also talked about his latest album, ‘Vuélélame el corazón’, a conceptual work that is very different from previous albums, which “deals with relationships in love and the different points of view about it, or the different states that we all may have gone through at some point in a relationship. From the effervescence of the beginning when you meet someone with ‘El bicho del amor’, to ‘Recuerdos’, with Valeria Castro, which is the echo of a past relationship, to ‘Quiéreme bien’, which talks about conscious love, or ‘Me lía’, which is about a guy who wants something more and she just wants a fling…”.
Despite so many years, so much work, so many projects, Macaco still loves what he does: “I like playing on all kinds of stages and in all kinds of contexts. If I didn’t still enjoy it, I wouldn’t play concerts”. And he adds: “I come from a family with a lot of economic ups and downs and I’ve had to make ends meet since I was very young. I started playing in the street not as an obligation, but as a wonderful choice, and from there I grew up with this ‘word of mouth’ that we now call virility. I consider myself privileged because I do what I want to do, with a lot of hard work, yes, I’m a hard worker, nobody has given me anything for free”. Famous for his commitment to all kinds of social and environmental causes, he claims to be at a time when he wants to position himself with the artisanal: “It’s a declaration of principles. We are in a moment of immediacy, everything is for here and now. I want to chew, not swallow. I’m just making a song about this”.
So many years dedicated to art and so many projects ahead of him make us wonder what goals Macaco still has to achieve. “There are always dreams to be fulfilled. I like to scratch at the intangible and bring it down to earth with love and work, but I have many things left to do in life… to spend a year lost on an island, for example…”. It is clear from the interview that Ibiza is in his plans: “I really like the north, I want to get to know it and travel more. During the pandemic, in the second year, we rented a house with some friends and we spent almost three weeks here, and I would ride my electric bike along the coast and it was amazing.” And he states emphatically, “You’re going to see more of me here, I feel like creating here.”
