In November 1990, Miriam Carbonell came into the world in the Zaragoza town of Santa Engracia. This birth would be followed by that of Eli López, another girl who would come to add weight to the small number of inhabitants of the Taustana town.. The mothers, friends since childhood, saw how their daughters weaved the same bond of friendship that had united them. Kindergarten classmates, the two girls who learned to speak together did not yet know that Their voices would still sound in unison three decades later.
The musical duo that we know today as Ixea –and which a week ago won the award for best EP at the Aragonese Music Awards– was conceived during the childhood of its components. At twelve years old, Miriam and Eli were already meeting to cover their favorite songs. In their singing sessions they also learned to play, self-taught, the instrument that fell into their hands. «We went by ear and by practice, until we got the melodies to sound minimally good. In our beginnings, YouTube and its tutorials did not yet exist,” recalls Eli López.
Despite their passion for music, they focused their university studies on the field of teaching. Miriam studied social education and Eli, children’s teaching. But, in the case of the Zaragoza group, All roads lead to music. When their study period ended and they were both back in their homeland, they decided to formalize the project.
The beginnings of Ixeya
“The first time we recorded in the studio was, for me, the beginning of our professional career,” says Miriam Carbonell. In 2019 they recorded their first songs and created their identity as a group. The name Ixeya comes from Aragonese, but there is no consensus on its meaning: «There are those who say that it means desire, that designates the borage flower or that it simply means nothing. “We chose the word because we love its sound,” they say.. From their first concert at the Artieda hostel, they began to receive calls from more places to go and play. They took their first steps in all kinds of events and festivals, some of them self-managed and underground. They also sang at village festivals and cultural events in the rural world.
The year of quarantine brought with it the group’s first self-published work; ‘2020’, a conceptual EP of four songs that symbolize the four seasons of the year. However, it was their most recent EP, ‘2 sisters’, the work that has established them as one of the most ambitious proposals of emerging Aragonese art. ‘Cerberus’, ‘Hydra’, ‘Nix’, ‘Charon’ and ‘Styx’: Each of the songs that make up the EP corresponds to a moon of Pluto and the mythological stories linked to their names. «On the one hand, we really like the idea of rural and countryside, but at the same time we are attracted to outer space and the stars. They seem like contrary things, what we can see and touch against the immensity of the universe,” explains Carbonell about the conceptual design of the album. “We were amused by the wink of relating a non-planet with our almost non-town, because we have always joked that Santa Engracia was not considered almost a town nor did it appear on the map,” says López.
Aragonese influences for the duo
Aragón’s presence stands out even in the duo’s influences. «The first songs we recorded when we were twelve years old were versions of Amaral. “He has always been one of our greatest inspirations,” acknowledges Eli López. Currently, they focus on artists who have a philosophy of life and a discourse similar to theirs, who talk about nature and emotions. «Some of our favorite singers are Lorena Álvarez, Natalia Lafourcade and Aurora, a Norwegian girl who creates voice melodies with a touch of Nordic folk. The play of voices is also what characterizes us, above the instruments,” says Carbonell.
Although Aragonese is present both in the name and in the compositions, it is not his mother tongue. For them, it is a way to “universalize it.” «The Aragonese has been very invisible for a while, it was considered a language of fools or village hicks. Languages are something universal, and Aragonese is similar to Galician, Asturian and Catalan. “We want to make visible that it can be understood anywhere on the peninsula,” defends the duo.
The group does not plan to wait idly for success. Currently, they are immersed in the process of composing three new songs and innovating in their concerts. His future goals are clear, “that they continue to call us and we can travel to other countries with music. But for dreams to come true, you have to keep working.”
Subscribe to continue reading
2024-03-30 23:05:04
#Ixeya #magic #orbiting #Aragonese #music
