With Josué Fonseca - Portraits in Times of Pandemic
Guitarras Alhambra asks Alhambra artists from all over the world what they think and how this pandemic has affected their lives.
Interview with Josué Fonseca from PYROPHORUS Guitar Duo
1. How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected your artistic activity?
It has affected a lot, I think that on the one hand some concerts that I had planned with Pyrophorus Guitar Duo, which is my most important project and the project that most fills and challenges me as an artist, have been cancelled, but on the other hand, other things have opened up that I had pending, for example, since I lived in Cuba I liked the idea of recording myself and playing various instruments and studying the piano a little, even the electric guitar that I love.
2. Now that we all have to adapt and reprogram ourselves to this situation, in what new projects are you working on?
I have a lot of things in mind, one of the things that inspires me the most is the preparation of the new album of Pyrophorus Guitar Duo in which we are thinking of making arrangements for piano, it would be pyrophorus Guitar Duo Vol. II, and thanks that I have now a little time and I am here at home, I am a little bit here exploring a little more in the piano, studying jazz, harmony, studying electric guitar, electric guitar techniques and things like that and also exploring recording programs like Cubase. I have ventured into this new facet and I would really love to develop myself as a producer and create things and record them for myself, I do not know if I will ever get anything out of it, but I am really doing it for myself, to satisfy that need that artists have to create.
3. In what positive way do you think this situation is affecting the society and the planet?
The fact of being locked up at home and being with your loved ones with your family and having time to share with them and to do things you have never done before and I think it is very positive in society and then on the planet. It is indeed very evident what is going on, I have seen satellite photos of how the pollution was before it all stopped and how it is after and it is incredible, the skies are cleaner from the pollution, even the animals return in their habitat a little bit as the human being is not in the way, the animals return to their place and they feel a little more free. I even recently saw a video from a colleague on Instagram of how the dolphins were right on the beach and I think the planet has finally caught a break.
4. What hobby or other activity have you started doing that you did not have time for before?
A hobby for a musician, I think maybe it always has to do with music too. And one of the things I am doing is that, learning to work with music, recording and editing programs as well, a little bit studying piano, not classical piano, but a little bit piano jazz, harmony and watching tutorials and things like that, getting into new things, even video recording and editing programs and stuff like that. I had always had it in mind to do it, but I had not had the chance to start and have the instruments and things that you need to create music and well also exercising a bit and things like that.
5. What would you advise to artists and art lovers in general to focus and be positive on this global stage that we are going through?
I am not the one to advice, but OK, an advice for artists, obviously it would be to take advantage of the time, the time between walls to search inside you to wonder what is what you are passionate about, to perfect yourself also as a musician, as an artist and above all, to use the time to improve and to climb the step, to climb each time one more step of the level in which we are and to leave the comfort zone.
6. After the coronavirus, do you think we will have learned anything and changed our lifestyle?
Yes, I think that we will have learned above all from the fragility of our society and the system we are living in, I would say that all over the world, in which an invisible enemy can paralyze the whole world and although human beings usually forget quite quickly, I do not know if the lesson will last long in our memory, but we will have learned important things. I think that above all by not having some things that we take them from granted on a daily basis and that has allowed us to realize that others are even more important like the fact of being with family, of being together, of simply valuing the fact of being able to go for a walk, to have the sun on your face, the air, these kind of essential things that we tend to forget every day and that are very important in life and should be the basis of being happy and being grateful to have the luck that others do not have.
