Rozalen
Singer
If you look at the left ankle of María Rozalén (Albacete, 1986), you will see an olive branch tattooed. It represents the most characteristic tree of Letur, the town where he grew up, located in the Segura mountain range. Such is the roots towards that land that I needed to engrave it on the skin. She also claims it in her lyrics, where the roots appear as an essential reference for composing. Or at the festival she created in 2016, Letural soul, which has now been in six editions. The job requires him to be far from home, but he never forgets where he comes from. “Being from Albacete marks me in who I am, in how I write, in how I speak. “She has defined my personality,” she admits in the interview she heads up this article from Talent on board, the project promoted by Iberia to make Spanish talent visible. For the singer, who stars in the airline’s latest safety video, talent is what naturally provokes something in others.
Studying psychology and training in music therapy, a specialty that measures the benefits and neural connections established when listening to a melody, is also reflected in his verses, as seen (heard) on his sixth and last album, Hug, a work of more than four years that marks a before and after in his professional career. “Even though I go to therapy when I don’t have the tools to endure certain things, I think this album has helped me understand love, nostalgia, death or illness. I have simply sung life and shown what has happened to me.” What has happened to him has been to suffer two great griefs, the sudden loss of his father and his grandmother: “They don’t teach you to embrace absence, to accept the essence of a cruel natural law. / So simple: one is born, then one dies. / What matters is the footprint you leave when you walk,” she dedicates it to her father in everything you loved.
Rozalén, as a child, in a photo with her parents, Angelita Ortuño and Cristóbal Rozalén, to whom she dedicates the song ‘Everything you loved’. Photos: PROVIDED BY ROZALÉN
The singer holding her third Platinum Record, for the album ‘The Tree and the Forest’.
Beatriz Romero (right), a sign interpreter, accompanies Rozalén at each concert to address deaf and mute people.
When asked about these two figures, Rozalén takes a breath and sits back in the chair. He confesses that music has been his greatest therapy, a catharsis that has allowed him to express everything that stirs him inside to turn sadness into a tribute to his family. Because he feels that if he doesn’t put it black on white it seems like he hasn’t lived it. “It’s a way to leave it well done. When I grow up, I sense that I will look at all my records and see my life in order,” she adds.
Her style, known for mixing flamenco, pop and copla and for criticizing social injustices, led her to be awarded the Goya for best original song in 2021 for the song. No, no and with the National Prize for Current Music, awarded by the Ministry of Culture. She has also been certified three times Platinum: in 2018 for the album When the river soundsin 2020 by Matrix and in 2022 by The Tree and the Forest. She admits that the best thing about receiving these recognitions is what it means to the people who love her. “My father traveled all over town with him. goya in his arms to have photos taken. She even showed it to the supermarket cashiers.”
Now, Rozalén remembers that girl who started playing the bandurria in the town’s rondalla and reciting poems that her mother and grandmother taught her. She doesn’t remember the exact moment she knew she would dedicate herself to music. What she did know from a young age was that she would sing all her life, until she lost her voice.
