In the last few years, because of the political situation in Venezuela, courageous and interesting independent alternative bands have been popping up all over the country and reaching the U.S. and we have had the pleasure of enjoying bands like La Vida Boheme, Famasloop and now we have Charliepapa, who have just received two Latin Grammy Nominations
After 6 years and 3 albums, Charliepapa have received two Latin Grammy nominations for their latest album, Y/O, which has yielded the band the nominations for “Best Rock Album” and “Best Rock Song” for the track, “Astrómetra”.
In September, Charliepapa received three Premios Pepsi awards for “Rock Artist of Year”, “Best Rock Song” and “Best Vide” for “Astrómetra”.
The band has also been nominated in seven categories for the Union Rock Show 2015 Awards for “Best Alternative Band”, “Best Male Voice”, “Best Image”, “Song of the Year”, “Artist of the Year”, “Best Album”, and “Best Video”.
Charliepapa has just released their latest video for the song, “Bangala” which was filmed in the city of Barcelona and directed by Venezuelan filmmaker Adrian Egea who also directed the videos for “Astromera” and “Merlina”.
Via telephone from Mexico City, we had the chance to talk to lead singer and guitarist, Mattia Medina and talked about the Latin Grammy nomination and their latest album.
Album Y/O de Charliepapa
Al Borde – (AB) – Tell us about your latest album Y/O, for which you have been nominated for the Latin Grammy
Mattia Medina (MM) – Y/O is our third album and this is the first time we have worked the whole album under the same concept, which is, “duality” and it includes the art, lyrics and videos and the theme of the album is based on the fact humanity has always tried to explain itself by diving itself in two opposite poles, the yin and yang, the theory of the sun and the moon, which is actually expressed on the album cover, the good and evil and in Venezuela we now have the blue and red, so this is a very wide concept and very exploitable and we all had this idea in mind, especially because of the political and social climate in Venezuela and the album name Y/O which can be “and” or “either or”, and it can also be “Yo” (me or I) where one decides which side one is on or none.
AB – Your latest video, for the song “Bengala” was filmed in Barcelona, what can you tell us about that?
MM – The video was filmed in the gothic section of Barcelona and was directed by Adrian Egea, a Venezuelan director who has worked with us many times in Venezuela and he just happened to be working in Barcelona and we wanted to work with him again since we had such a great chemistry working together and he knows the band very well and is able to interpret what we want to convey. For the video we wanted to do something like the old Nintendo 64 video game Golden Knight and that’s why we have those oversized polygonal masks and it includes some of the concepts of the album like the art for the album cover, which on the video is stolen from a museum and then there’s a chase after the robbers, and overall we are very happy with the results and it was a lot of fun to make.
AB – How do you feel about the nomination for the Latin Grammy?
MM- We are stoked about it, we grew up listening to a lot of the Mexican rock bands like La Gusana Ciega and now we find ourselves being nominated along with them, so we feel honored just to be mentioned along with them and we also think it’s a great way to get our name out to people who have probably never heard of us, as it is very hard to be an independent band in Venezuela and even more to be able to get your music out on an international level.
AB – Do you have plans to come and play in the U.S. any time soon?
MM – We will be in Las Vegas for the Grammy ceremony and we will be doing some promotion while we are there, but we hope to be back soon and actually play some live shows.
The Latin Grammy’s will be broadcasted live by Univision on November 19 from the MGM Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
