Lara Bello

“The story is about a little paper boat that gets lost at sea and tries to win a losing battle against the water as it sinks bit by bit. After getting lost and being tossed around trying to survive against the elements, when the boat finally realises that it can’t hold out any longer, it discovers that if it folds itself over once and then again, it can transform itself into something that can fly. And it flies away…”. This is just one of the stories Lara Bello tells us in her song Jiyuu no Hiroba, sung in perfect Japanese on her album La niña pez (The Girl Fish). Just like in the story, Lara transforms herself constantly in an origami-like way to become a jazz singer, flamenco singer, gymnast, actress, dancer and performer: “The voice is another part of the body, just like movement is part of dance.. That’s why I’ve never known where one ends and the other begins,” comments the artist.

She sings about imagination, the future, paper boats, flowers in the city, fish who “know how to relax and let themselves drift with the current or swim against it when it suits them”. Just like a fish, she is elusive, and it’s hard to pin her down. One moment she’s in New York, the next she’s performing for a French crowd. You might even find her in Marocco, Israel, Japan, Finland, India, Romania or even at our Tertulia Luneada concerts in Seville. If you’re lucky you might come across her dancing through the streets of her hometown of Granada, surrounded by her friends who call her Larita, including Lila Downs who has sung her praises ever since they met in New York.

Granada, London and Barcelona were just some of the pit stops she made as she developed her talents in flamenco dance, contemporary dance, jazz and acting. For her, art knows no borders: “while each location produces its very own creative energy, we mustn’t forget that it is people who create art”. Influenced by both flamenco and jazz, her work is the perfect example of the diffuse boundries between musical cultures and genres. Lara Bello’s music is inspired by the likes of Lole Montoya, Oum Kalthoum, Omar Faruk, Enrique Morente, Carmen Linares or even George Michael and Sting (who she adores). “My music is wrapped in the colours of flamenco and listeners can hear that its roots lie in the south, but I always add my personal touch,” explains Bello.

What about her albums? “These days one makes albums not so much for the sales, since people no longer buy music in a physical form in the way they used to, but in order to mark the passage of time and show off the work you want to publish. It’s a way for your songs to become born and complete, like children,” she explains. Her songs become little paper airplanes, transformed from little boats, that are flown around the world by a small and cameleon-like girl fish who hasn’t lost her ability to be surprised and excited by life. And following her each and every step of the way, the flowers of the city, the knights-errant and all those of us who listen to her music from the other side of the loudspeaker.

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