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The silence of live music under the restrictions imposed by the pandemic together with the progressive closure of concert halls throughout the country constitutes the engine of the initiative Relive the Plaza de la Música, born with the goal of recovering this capital’s public space, attached to the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium, to hold open-air concerts.
The musicians from Gran Canaria Alba Gil Aceytuno and Nelson Saavedra, both from the local band Zumurrud, promote this proposal through social networks and have submitted an instance to the Isleta-Puerto-Guanarteme district council, in which they request the necessary permits to “reactivate this space for live music, which is what it was designed for , as its name suggests, “says saxophonist Alba Gil Aceytuno.
“The initiative arises because there is almost no space left in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to play live music, since everyone has been dying for various reasons, from protests from neighbors to profitability problems and, now, the coronavirus crisis, “says Gil. “In this context, both the premises of the Plaza de la Música and the Plaza de la Música itself are abandoned and we are very angry, because it is a perfect location to hold concerts, because nobody is disturbed and allows us to maintain the measures of distance, ”he adds.
Last November 2020, Zumurrud organized a jam session and a concert in the square itself, which was interrupted and evicted by the local police due to the lack of municipal permission. “They encouraged us to request permission and that was what we did at the beginning of the year, although we still have no answer,” says Gil, who does not rule out repeating a similar action to influence the fight to reactivate this space in the face of the crisis in the music sector. one of the hardest hit within the cultural sphere.
Both the Plaza de la Música and the surrounding music venues, which hosted the legendary Mojo Club and Sala Nasdaq until 2018 and 2020, respectively, belong to the City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Nevertheless, This initiative aims to begin to reactivate an alternative musical circuit to the institutional programming, which is currently paralyzed.
“The idea is, simply, to take advantage of such a wide outdoor space, with some of the premises to be able to have a point of light and maintain the equipment, and guaranteeing the control of capacity”, says Gil, who affirms that “the support from institutions during this crisis has been incredible, but what is interesting in the music scene of a city is that the two circuits coexist ”.
The next step for the architects of Zumurrud, who are launching their self-titled debut album this week, is to formalize the proposal of Relive the Plaza de la Música and perhaps be constituted as an association or collective. “The idea is that a lot of people join in and see how far we can go. At the moment, we have a lot of support within the sector, because there are many of us. Hopefully we get it ”, he concludes.
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