It is always encouraging when we see young artists take chances with their music and art, even to the point of possibly alienating potential fans or their own opportunities of promotion and bigger recognition and one of those artists is the Mexican singer songwriter and producer Mitre.
For his latest video, “Katarina”, Mitre has taken his song and given it a bigger and stronger message on this video that was directed by Luis Guizar and produced by Pete Galindo and filmed at Civic Center Studios in downtown Los Angeles. As on his previous video, “Casi un Recuerdo”, La Catrina, masterfully played by Hugo Melendez, guides the viewer through the story; in this case La Catrina takes us on a voyage through Mexico’s bloody history of death and corruption.
Prior to the official release of the video, we had the chance to speak to Mitre about the video and its message:
Al Borde (AB): How did the idea of mixing a political and social message for this video come about?
Mitre: We wanted to do something a little different and as you’ve seen, the previous videos have been linked to the past and we wanted to make the video for “Katarina” a follow up to the previous video “Casi un Recuerdo”. We wanted to have La Catrina show us not only what hurts her in terms of love and spirituality, but also give a more profound message. As she reads me the tarot cards, she is telling me what has been going on in Mexico, which also hurts her very deeply.
AB – The video seems to be filled with lots of symbolisms, tell us more about that.
Mitre: when we started throwing ideas around, we wanted La Catrina to guides us through the world of the dead, and Pete Galindo suggested taking it a little further and giving it a more profound message and that’s when we decided to add all these symbolic scenes, some are subtle and some are very strong. For example, there are personal symbolisms like dealing with the grief of my recently departed mother, which is shown as La Catrina showing me the tarot cards, my mother read tarot cards professionally. Then, as we see the cards, we see all these characters that have affected Mexico in terrible ways starting with Santa Ana, who gave away half of Mexico’s territory, then we have Porfirio Diaz, also Diaz Ordaz who ordered the assault and assassination of the students in ’68, we also have other presidents who did despicable things and we ended up with the 43 students of Ayotzinapa. At the end a soldier appears burying me, which is what happened to the 43 students that disappeared, but no one really knows what happened and that’s how truth is buried in Mexico.
AB: I was also very taken by the cinematography and lighting, it gave me the feeling that out of darkness there’s always a chance for light, hope or truth.
Mitre: At the end of the video I appear playing the piano and the ghosts of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa appear and La Catrina smiles as if she was finally at peace and that is what we are trying to convey, we want the music to bring peace to those souls and not only Ayotzinapa, but also the ones from Tlatelolco and all those others that have died or disappeared under the hands of the Mexican government and I think art is a way to heal wounds and reconcile everything that has happened and to come out of that darkness and into the light.
AB- It is admirable that young artists take risks not only showing their innermost personal feelings, but also their stand on political and social issues.
Mitre: I feel that as artists is O.K. to sing about love and every day things, but we also have to talk about what Is happening in the world and countries like Mexico, we can no longer ignore it, we have to open our eyes and take action.
Mitre will be playing live and showing the video on Saturday November 21 at the Film/Video Cultural Pachanga: Exhibition/Discussion/Performance at the Duron Gallery at SPARC, 685 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291. For more information you can visit the oficial website: www.SPARCinLA.org.
The self titled album Mitre can be found on iTunes and Spotify.
You can find out more about Mitre on his official website: http://www.mitre-music.com/ and you can also follow Mitre on Facebook.
