Are the tickets for Sandra already on sale? Ask two girls who should not reach 25 at the Opera Theater ticket office. In September Sandra Mihanovich will celebrate the 40th anniversary of her album let’s make love and those girls who weren’t even born when it came out want to be there because they know what it means. In times where any fact is considered iconic, Sandra really deserves the adjective.
Say what He came late to feminism but we know that he always exercised it, starred in the movie The fears but he doesn’t know how to fear He never left the closet because he was never inside. And if there is nothing special about two women who shake hands, together with Celeste Carballo, he stirred up the hetero-cis mainstream in the living room of the moment, causing several to run to change their glasses.
This country had a Sandro and a Sandra that need no explanation, two popular idols to whom we give our love. Now, on the other side of the zoom, Sandra is hammocking in a rocking chair, she says that she continues to drink a little whiskey before the shows and suddenly she sings a cappella those songs that we all know. Let her start the recital in this talk with EPUone more and we don’t fuck anymore.
-Let it not be known but with my friends from high school we took three buses to go to the historic presentation of “Puerto Pollensa” in Obras. I think it was the first time that a woman sang in the Temple of Rock. How do you remember that day?
–At that time I didn’t even know that it was the first time that a woman sang in Obras, which helped a lot (she laughs). When you are very young you have a certain omnipotence; I was a Sandra who could do everything. Fears never appear at the beginning but over the years, when you begin to realize things. When you are a boy you take everything ahead of you, anything seems logical to you, you are pure future
I was summoned by my producer at the time, Ricardo Kleinman, a very advanced guy. She perceived that national rock was the music that was breaking her. Don’t forget that it was the year of the Malvinas: music in English disappeared from all the radios, so there was a kind of very strong Argentine attack that was reflected in national music. I wasn’t that rocker but I fell into that movement. I went with my four-piece band that I sang with in pubs, Oscar Kreimer playing sax, Marilina Ross and Celeste Carballo as guests. I had a thousand adrenaline, we did two recitals the same night with five thousand people each. Crazy.
–You always had your own imprint, you did not belong to a band nor had you accompanied other musicians. What was it like to be a woman in ’82 and stand on that stage?
–The truth is that I never had a question with that subject. At my place I had a very powerful mom like Monica, a hard worker, who never made me feel that it was going to be difficult to achieve goals because I was a woman. Undoubtedly, she experienced that difficulty when she came to a television channel where everyone was male except her, but she never made me feel it. Actually I recently joined feminism and incorporated it internally and definitively with Not one less. That’s when the card fell on me and I said: “There is no other way, being a feminist is the only way.”
–You just named Celeste and I don’t know if they told you that one of the emblematic viral videos on Twitter is the one of her and you singing on the Susana Giménez program. At that time, were you aware of the relevance of an album like “Mujer contra mujer”, which spoke of gender with total naturalness?
–Look, “Mujer contra mujer” was a song that a fan sent us from Spain; It was from Mecano and when we heard it we thought: “We have to sing this”. And, as you say, we did it very naturally and spontaneously. What’s more, I never realized that the entire graphic of the disc photographed by Gabriel Rocca, it was very strong, flashy and amazing, it had such great power.
I confess something to you: one day I was in the car advancing through Rodríguez Peña, arriving at Lavalle there is a kind of zig-zag and on that wall there were about 10 posters. I just stared at it and I was like “Oh shit!” (we laugh). How strong is this! The amazing thing is that I thought of it as if I saw another person…
What struck you about that image?
–I saw two women with a very strong, very clear, very explicit attitude. And the truth is that I liked it, I felt proud of that. I think one of the important things is that I was lucky to be able to say in songs everything that happened to me. The fact of passing a I am what I amand Woman against woman o one Puerto Pollensa from the music It allowed me to tackle things that were much more difficult, committed and hard with words or attitude.
The music surrounds everything with precious energy, making even those who are completely on the defensive experience it in a different way, because they don’t receive a slap or a punch, but rather a song. I always insist that music is healing It has allowed me to travel with many fewer fears, fights and regrets.
–When “Puerto Pollensa” came out, Marilina was prohibited, there were black lists here and many artists were exiled or killed. On the record, María Celia Parrondo, which is her real name, appears as the author to avoid censorship. How did the song come to you?
–Totally, it was like that, she was forbidden. I got to know the song when Marilina fearfully began to set foot in Argentina, to see if she would dare to return from Spain. She was staying at the house of Emilio Alfaro, her ex-husband, and she organized a meeting with people who came to give her a hug and support her. I didn’t know her, Alejandro Doria took me, who had directed me in a couple of films. He asked me: “Do you dare to come and meet her?” Forget it, I went crazy, my legs were shaking. I admired her a lot as an actress and she knew the songs from her first album…
–Can we say that you went in fan mode?
But of course, totally. for me it was meeting an idol. That night she grabbed the guitar and sang “Puerto Pollensa”. We all fell on our asses! It is that song that if you hear it for the first time moves you and hits you in the chest, it transcends any label, It is a beautiful love story extraordinarily well told.
At the touch I asked him if I could sing it and received a “no, no way” as an answer. She had written it as a gift, it was as if she had bought a box of chocolates for her girlfriend. She had no dimension of where she was going to go with that song. Later, when she realized that she was going to be able to come back, she authorized me. It was in December 1981.
–Is it true that you just got to know Puerto Pollensa in 2014, on a trip that you and your wife, Marita, took with Marilina and her partner?
-It is absolutely true. Imagine that when the song came out everyone thought: “Well, Sandra and Marilina… it’s the love story of the two of them.” But no, we laughed at it, we didn’t give a damn, we looked the other way (she laughs) and over the years we became very good friends.
In 2014 we finally went with our couples to Puerto Pollensa and it was a dream trip. We arrived at 6 in the morning, “in the sunrises of Puerto Pollensa” literally. It was very beautiful.
–“I am what I am” is a hymn that transcends gender and speaks of identity, it is the claim to be what we want. It was an inclusive song in times where the issue of diversity was far removed from marketing. Did you believe in her from the first moment?
–It is the most inclusive song of all, “I am what I am” is from 84, we had just recovered our democracy. The association between a song with these lyrics and our feeling of saying “enough, we do and say what we want, we show ourselves without being accountable to anyone, welcome freedom” is not less.
From that moment until today I have sung it in all possible contexts. I found “I am what I am” to say what I felt. I heard it for the first time in the mouth of a drag queen who moved her lips mimicking the version sung by Gloria Gaynor, who took it from the musical comedy The cage of the crazy and he did it in a disco version. I was convinced to record it from the first moment. Next year he turns 40 and it is a song that transcends us, It is an enormous pride for me to have had the clarity to take that opportunity. I feel life as a succession of opportunities, I have had many and in this case I needed that song that came across me and now it belongs to everyone.
–Lino Patalano was the incarnation of a way of producing culture and César Mascetti of a way of doing journalism that perhaps no longer exists. They both died last year and you loved them very much, how do you remember them?
–They were two people not only very dear to me but also important for our culture. Lino was the great illusionist, the magician who made dreams come true, passionate about life. I feel honored to have been close to you. When we married Marita in 2016, we went to share Lino’s 70th birthday in his town in Italy, it was a beautiful and unforgettable party.
As for Cesar, this was my first Father’s Day without any dad. Mine left in 2020 and César, who was my chosen father, my mother’s partner, a person of integrity, honesty and incredible polenta, is always with us.
At this moment I am in San Pedro, we come very often to accompany mom and because La Campiña is there, which is her legacy. A place made with a lot of love and work, full of roses and oranges. He kept planting peaches until the last minute, knowing that he was not going to see them bear fruit. That was his attitude to life. We laugh, we talk a lot about him. We say “Fat boy, how lucky you are not here because we could not do anything, surely you would not have left us!” (smiles looking at the sky). In the end, we laugh and we cry, I like to say that Mama and César are the Argentines of Argentina that we can be.
Photos: Alejandra López @alejandralopezfotografa
Photos live shows: Cristina Rego for Kwobit Music
