The Blog's Purpose

Welcome to "No sólo de rumba vive el hombre", a Spanish pop and rock blog. "Spanish" in this here case refers both to the blog and to the music covered in it. If you're here, I imagine it's because you want to know something more about the blog's background, who's behind it, what it will cover, and such, and I imagine one of your first questions will be...

You are Spanish and the artists covered are Spanish too. Why are you writing this blog in English?
Well, to begin with, sites about Spanish music for a Spanish audience are plentiful, and I don't think I'm the most accomplished music journalist in existence. In fact, I'm probably a lousy one. What I have not seen often (or ever) are sites about Spanish pop/rock music intended mainly for a non-Spanish speaking audience. Which is the niche this blog seeks to... um, not cover, since that would be pretentious. If my work here inspired someone with better qualifications or skills to pick up the job and make a better site, I would consider it a good outcome.

So is Spanish popular music your favourite music, then? As a matter of fact, no. The ratio in my music collection between English and Spanish language recordings is unmistakably unbalanced and tilted towards the English portion, and not a single soul from my top ten favourite artists or bands comes from within the borders of the Iberian peninsula. But rock, pop and blues are my favourite music genres (and jazz, and classical, and flamenco, and...), and in the same way that I love when somebody makes me discover an exciting record from Nigeria or Mexico, it makes me sad that some excellent music is destined to never get outside the confines of a local market for purely commercial and/or linguistic reasons.

But I'm not interested in ethnic music / But why would I want to listen to a bastardized version of my country's music. The two mutually exclusive stereotypes about Spanish pop and rock music are that it either is just flamenco-style songs with a band playing behind or that it's just like American / British pop only with the words sung in a differentt language. Actually many of the artists do take the middle route, besides, American pop/rock is not the only influence, with French or Italian pop and Latin music being also part of the melting pot. And yes, bands approaching their music pretty much in the way of the two stereotypes mentioned do exist. Which doesn't mean their output is not enjoyable.

So what do you plan to do? At first my efforts will be directed to write about the 50 artists appearing in the latest attempt to establish a Spanish pop "aesthetic canon", an initiative that has its strong and weak points, which I explore in the introductory post to the series. Later, I will most certainly write about noteworthy artists that didn't make the list, and after that I might freeze the blog in its state or I might expand it with album reviews and such goodies. It will depend on how well I feel about the thing; this is a hobby and I like to keep up with hobbies for as long as they give me more pleasure than stress.

Unless somebody decides I should be paid for this. Then I'll listen ;-)

Finally, what does the blog's name mean? It's a play on Matthew 4:4, and so the translation would be something like "Man shall not live by rumba alone". But more importantly it is the title of the album by Catalan alternative singer songwriter Albert Pla which gave him his place in the meta-list. Not that I'm very knowledgeable about Albert, although I'm very aware of his public persona; but the name of that album struck me as a particularly appropriate title for a blog which tries to show that there's more to the popular music of Spain than the Gypsy Kings (who, as everybody knows, are French anyway).