Lara Magrinyà (L’arannà): "One day while experimenting we said: what would happen if we mixed the redoblat singing of Ibiza with Daft Punk?"

IbizaTur and Marí are two of the most abundant surnames in Ibiza; they are so widespread that they are almost unavoidable in the countryside, like pine trees, rosemary, or (as they used to be) lizards. The fusion of these two surnames has served to title the second album by the duo L’arannà, composed of the Catalan Anna Sala and the Ibizan Lara Magrinyà. Turmarí was released on October 30th and is a tribute to Ibiza, to its musical tradition, but also to the present and to all the “Ibizas” that coexist on the island. Synthesizers and Ibizan folk tradition blend with surprising naturalness in a pop experiment loaded with intention and sensitivity. I do not know how the album is received if you are not from Ibiza or Formentera, but if it happens that you are, Turmarí constitutes a very emotional journey. L’arannà, following the album presentation on Saturday, November 7th, at the Auditori de Barcelona, will be on Friday the 13th at Can Balaguer, in Palma, as part of the Open House festival. Do not miss it: Turmarí is to the 21st century what Cançons d’Eivissa –the first album by UC– was to the 20th century.

In Turmarí you speak about the extinction of the lizard and housing prices.

— Yes, the moment you say “I will make an album about Ibiza”, these are topics you encounter immediately; without having to look for whether we want to reclaim this or that, dodging it would have been strange.

Or the legend of the UFOs of Es Vedrà: in the song ‘Manises 1979’ –with Albert Pla as a collaborator– you play at imagining that extraterrestrials have abducted the islet.

— This song has several layers. One is to imagine the hole that Es Vedrà would leave if it were to disappear; it is a metaphor for everything we could lose as a culture. The fact that Es Vedrà has acquired such fame, the overcrowding of the viewpoint, the fact that access to it has to be limited... In the end, it is as if the islet were to disappear for the people of Ibiza. We also wanted to make a reference to a song by Albert Pla that takes place on an airplane and where the singer-songwriter ends up having sex with a passenger named Antònia Font.

How did the collaboration with Albert Pla come about?

— We are very happy, we can't believe it! We had crossed paths with him on a couple of occasions; we participated as singers in the Javis' series La Mesías; that is why we knew him. Pla was one of the lead actors. When we started writing Manises 1979, we had the idea of linking Albert Pla's song with ours; we contacted him, invited him to a concert, sent him the demo of the record..., and some time later he told us he wanted to collaborate on the song.

Arannà is a half-Ibiza half-Catalan duo, but the truth is that Turmarí turned out 100% Ibizan.

— That is how it is. There is the redoubled singing, the traditional Ibizan instruments... Turmarí is electronic, but we have tried for it to be very organic. Many tunes are Ibizan tunes; we have taken these melodies and incorporated them; people from Ibiza or Formentera detect it immediately, but from the outside, it is seen differently. Our idea was for Turmarí to be very Ibizan and at the same time to project our gaze towards so many Ibizas that exist. From the inside, you have a tradition, but from the outside, it seems that another Ibiza tradition has been created: all this wave from the 60s and 70s... We have tried to take a journey through the different cultures that are linked to Ibiza and Formentera.

Has the Catalan half of L’arannà also had to learn to play the snare drum? You are both classically trained pianists.

— Yes, yes, the Catalan part also redoubles. It is true that I am more the leading voice, but she also had to learn it; this means that it does not matter where you come from, if you want to learn it. The truth is that it is a way of singing that is very different from our European tradition, we had to train the muscles; at first it is scary because it feels like you are going to hurt your throat. Redoubled singing consists of eating one of the syllables of the verse and transforming it into a kind of guttural trill: it has its difficulty.

After Barcelona and Palma, the tour will take you to places as diverse as Rabat, Santiago de Compostela, and Naples. How is such an Ibizan proposal received outside the Pityusic Islands?

— The reception changes a lot, but not as much as you would expect: the further we have gone, and the more different the place was, the more surprised we were at how they received it; in a very emotional way, at times. Obviously, afterwards, in Ibiza and Formentera, people have a total complicity with what you are doing.

I wouldn't know how to say if Turmarí is more folk or more pop. How did the idea of making an album like this come about?

— It was born once we discovered the 'redoblat' singing; as an Ibizan woman, I had never heard it live, we knew that it had practically disappeared for decades. It was somewhat in the academic environment that we discovered it; someone told us about the Christmas Caramelles and the 'redoblat' singing, and I said, 'what a shame to have been born in Ibiza and not have known about this!'. And with our curiosity, we investigated. It is a very distinctive expression and very different from what we had heard. One day, just trying things out, we said: what would happen if we mixed 'redoblat' singing with Daft Punk? And so, playing with synthesizers, we arrived at the conception of the album. At that moment, I didn't know how to 'redoblar', there was that component of deciphering all of that. Whether it is more pop or more folk? I couldn't say. Turmarí was produced by the two of us, without an external reference; it has been an exercise in exploring many paths. I suppose it's folk, it's pop, and it's electronic.