I am the first and only musician in my family. I am from Chile. I start because my father and my mother always listen to good music like Argentina rock and U2. I really love U2. And I want to start playing guitar because of The Edge. I was like 12 or 13 when I started guitar. My mother has a nylon-stringed guitar that my grandfather bought for my mom to learn music, but my mom never learned. In my school has an extra-programmatic music class and the teacher of music teach guitar for this class. I learned for one year only chords and songs to play. Then, I started to play with my best friend, Lucas, and his brother. Lucas playing the drums and Matias play the guitar. I don’t remember the name of the group. We pass all of the summer playing all the days the same songs, but we enjoy so much. I go in their house, they have the drums, and I walk with my bag, and I stay one week and come back to my house a couple days and then go back for a week to play.

I play one year nylon-stringed guitar and one year electric guitar, and then I pass to the electric bass because the band had two guitars, and I start bass basically because we need a bassist. We only play in events at the school with people that we know.

In high school, I chose to study math, and l like, but I did it because all of my friends choose math. And then it was very difficult for me, and I change for biology. When I graduate high school, I decide to study music at the university in Valparaíso. My mom was shocked at the beginning when I say I want to study music. She want me to study engineering like my dad, but when she knew that is the only thing I want to do, she and my dad support me. I have lucky.

It was a really good experience because I don’t know anything about music. I only know the chords. I start with electric guitar, but I had a really bad teacher. He was like the teacher in Whiplash. You know this film? I thought to quit music because of that. He teach me in a class only for me one on one, and he say me, “You only waste your parents’ money! You don’t study!” I study a lot, but I can’t learn all of the things in one month.

One day in the breakfast with my mom before I go to the university, I start to cry and my mom said, “What happened? What happened?” I tell her about the teacher, and she said, “Don’t worry. Quit the class and start the next year with the bass.” So, I try bass again.

I quit the university because in the third year I learn so much, and I reached a high level. I was thinking my mom and dad are paying a lot of money. I say to my mom that I want to pause the career and study electric bass outside the school with one professor and then come back to the university with a really good bass level. But my mom say, “Don’t worry the money. We pay for the classes and the university.” But I quit the university because I learned so much in those private classes. My mom really wanted me to have a degree, so I study sound production for two years and graduated.

When I quit the university, I started to play the clarinet by myself. The first two years, it was horrible. The sound of the clarinet, I don’t like it, I don’t want to play with other people. And then I start to enjoy the process to learn. My friend showed me a few things, and I go and start to play in a music, dance and theater group in the street called La Gritona Comparsa. The first time was great. We played cumbia and Latin rhythms that is so festive, and I feel the energy with the people dancing and feeling all the things. I think this is amazing. I like the people and the impression of the people. When they are walking fast but then they stop and see you and smile and say, “Oh, very nice,” for me it’s everything. One of the things I like about the music is share with the people. We feel the same feelings.

There I meet a lot of musicians. And then one day a friend of mine told me, “Hey, you want to play in the streets with me to earn money?” And I say, “Yes, I want to.” He play the saxophone and we play bossa nova, jazz, pop, Dua Lipa. We play in the streets and people ask, “Hey, can you play in my wedding?” Things like this. We do this in Valparaíso. Nobody bothers us. All of the people in the street support us when the police come. Then with another friend, we start a cumbia orchestra. It took me five years to get big enough to live from the music.

When I was 15 or 16, I see the work of luthier on the internet. It looks like very nice work. I really want to do this. Not so much people do it, and all the people who do it are in Santiago. Nobody in Valparaíso. One day there was a meeting with all of the luthiers in Santiago and I say, “I’m going to go because I want to know people. I want to learn.” I went and I meet some luthiers, but they do classes only in Santiago. And I say, “Well, someday I will learn because I want it.”

With my bass, I start to remove the frets to do fretless, and I talked to my bass teacher and ask how to do this. He say, “You need to stop that because you are doing really bad.” He say me, “The next class bring the bass, and I will show you how.” It took so much time. and we was working on that bass for two months. When we finish, I say, “I love it so much that process. I want to learn more. Could you teach me?” And he say, “Yes.”

René Moris was my teacher in Valparaíso. He always teach me a lot of things. Not only musical things. Life things. I ask for advice, and it was really nice to learn and break the barrier between student and teacher and the age. My bass teacher is my best friend, my professor.

In 2022, my mom said that we are going to vacation to Colombia. Colombia is a country I always want to go for the music, for the culture. And I say, “I’m going to stay in Colombia to travel, to learn.” But it was a really difficult decision because all of the things that I was working to live with the music, to work with the instruments, my group, I say goodbye. I leave all that things for nothing – only for travel and get new experiences, and it was the best decision that I made in my life. I had my clarinet. I look for some place to work for food and sleep. I worked in a hostel cleaning the bath, doing the beds in Barranquilla. I worked on an island making a boat on Isla de Tierra Bomba. Then, one day a guy read my facebook chat. He said, “Hey, I’m a musician. I’m a Chilean too. I live in Palomino. Come here and live with us. We want to meet and play music.” I think it is great. I think I will be there for two weeks, and I stay 4 months in his house. Diego and Barbara is a couple. They needed a clarinet player in their group. One day they need to travel to Bogotá and they say me, “Hey if you want, you can stay in the house waiting for us to come back, or if you want it go with us, travel, play music.” I say, “I will travel with you.” We traveled for one month from the Caribbean coast to Bogotá and we split. I went to Medellín and then back to Palomino. I stayed 6 months in Colombia and came back to Chile for 10 days, and my mom tell me we are traveling to Europe with my sister and brother. We went to a lot of countries, but a tour I don’t like. Florence, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam and London. A really big trip. My mom knew I wasn’t going to go back to Chile. I came to Barcelona in March 2023.

When I was in Valparaíso, I met a girl that was in an exchange program. She’s from Cartagena, Spain. We had a really nice vibe. We are really nice friends, and she also plays the clarinet. She was living with a friend from Lleida in Catalunya. When I arrived here, I called her and said, “Hey, do you have a place? Can I say for some days?” She tell me, “Sure, I have an apartment here in Barcelona for 3 people and now we are only two.” I stayed for three weeks, and it was really nice. We are so much friends. Then, she needed to rent the room, so I went out and bought a speaker and go out to the street to make money and start to rent the room. It was like 300 Euros for the room every month. I start playing in the street in one place in neighborhoods. One day my clarinet broke, and I need to stop and pay to fix the instrument and all my economy go down. I say to my friend, “I’m going to leave because I can’t pay the rent.” She said, “Hey, don’t worry. Pay me when you want.” I don’t know if I can pay, so I go. Another friend ask how I was doing looking for a place. I tell her, “Really bad.” She told me, “Come to my house. I have a couch and you can sleep there.” That two weeks that I passed without the clarinet I was depressed not only for not make money but for not playing. I need to play because it is my life.

I am a really shy person and get in the subway to ask for money in that time was really difficult for me, so I start to work in construction because I don’t have the money and the music doesn’t give me so much. I work for two months. It was horrible. I get up at 6 in the morning. Work 12 hours. Then come back to my house. At 9 o’clock I shower and make food. They pay me 50 Euros per day. I never play the clarinet.

Then I quit and not have the money and I don’t have house, I don’t have anything. I pass one night in the street, and then a friend of mine tell me, “Hey, come to my house until you have a place.” Then after one week I found a place in the Social Center. It’s an old factory occupied by people. We don’t pay anything. All of the people build their own room. All of the things we make we find wherever, in the garbage. Clean, not much, but safe. The police send a message that they are going to close the building. Now I need to move because I don’t have papers here and it’s risky. I don’t want to fight with the police and pass one night in jail and then deported. So now I’m moving now again. I lived in many places here. I think I always have a person that save me. I’m always on the edge.

When I started playing in the street, the police stop me many times and want to take the instrument, my speaker and my money. The police say, “Give me your permit.” I don’t have it. I don’t have papers, and the police call immigration. And one kind maybe 13 years old comes and says, “What’s happening? He’s only playing the clarinet.” And the police say, “Hey, get out of here.” Another kid comes and says the same thing and the third person was a girl who say to the police, “Hey, over there are some people selling drugs, and you are here worried about the musician? Do your job well.” And they listened to her. They said, “Hey, disarm your clarinet. Stop playing. Take your things and go out.” And I do that. Very lucky. The police stopped me maybe 10 times on the street. That’s why I go to the subway.

I started playing in the subway one month ago. My friend Fabian say to me, “We need to make money. We need to go to the subway.” And we try it. He play the trumpet, and I play the clarinet, some jazz and bossa nova. We were not doing so well. We tried with another friend who plays accordion, and it was worse. Then I try alone, and that was the way that I make so much money. On a good day I make 60 Euros in 4 hours on the train. It’s nice. But in regular it’s like 45 or 50 Euros. Today was really bad, and with 2 we had to split so maybe 15 Euros. We are very happy to share the music with very nice people. We feel the vibe. With Nicolas, we only play few times and know a few songs. We play Agua de Beber, All of Me, Blue Drag by Django Reinhart, I Can’t Give You Anything But Love. So nice. In the subway, I work in the morning, I make the money and I want to do other things later. The other day I saw a girl that I saw before and I say, “I am playing the same song that I was playing the last time!” I come back to my house and start learning new songs. I try to start learning new songs, maybe one song per week. I need to study. I am improving. I think I don’t have very talent, but I am a really focused person to study. My biggest skill is my hard work. I work so much. I play the red line.

I think the people like the music in the street, but sometimes they don’t know how to react because it’s not a common thing to see. But I think that there is a lot of shy people. Always when I play, I try to see the people and interact. I see a lot of people that they look at me and when I look, they turn away, but they are enjoying.

Now I start a course next week on-line to learn clarinet repair, and then I need to go for practical hours in Granada with clarinet luthier. The first time we are playing in a big event in Valparaiso in Chile with the group of cumbia called La Pato Azul, the Blue Duck. We are in the sound test and my clarinet doesn’t make a sound. Two weeks before, I bought some tools to repair the clarinet only because I think someday maybe I need it, and that was the day. I called my mom because she was going to see me and I said, “You can come now because my clarinet is broken. I need to repair it with the tools.” She brought them and I fixed it and we played.

When I travel to here, I put some goals. It was very abstract. I want to travel, I want to learn and I want to make money. I want to live here and travel, but I want go back to Latin America because I need to learn so much from new rhythms and new music and the culture I love it. The culture here I don’t like it. It’s very cold the people. In Columbia, I was traveling sometimes and the only money that I have was 20 cents, but always have food, a place to live. The poor people were the most generous. I appreciate this so much. I say, “I don’t have anything, but I don’t need anything.” To make money, I come here. It’s a really nice place to learn, to meet people, grow up with musicians, but for my life, I don’t want to stay here.

I’m a really hippie person and I want to buy a small farm, make a house and put some little cabanas for guests and live in community my whole life in Latin America. Our band here in Barcelona, Volkanes, we travel to a town named Lakabe near to Pamplona for the first concert for the band. It’s a little town that was abandoned, a ghost town, until 1980s. It’s a community now. Maybe 60 people. It’s all people who share all the money. It’s a really nice community. I thought it wasn’t possible to live this way now, but it is. They have a little school. Mostly young people. I want to live this way.

When I decided to start doing the music, I say, “Well, I’m not going to be rich. I don’t have so much money, but if I can’t live with the music, I will look for another job that give me money but also give me the time to play.” The music is always essential in my life, but not for the work, only to enjoy. If I can work with the music, Ok.

I think that we need to spend so much time studying playing and rehearsal that if you are with a person that don’t understand your style of life, it is very difficult. This life you don’t have any security. I start living this way to let the things happen, but I don’t focus on making them happen now. I was talking to Fabian the other day, and I say, “I am really happy now.” And he say, “Why are you happy?” I say, “One year ago, I arrive here. I don’t have anything. I don’t have any clarity of what I’m doing, but I want to travel, make money and learn. And now I am traveling, making money and learning.” I’m enjoying the life that I’m living now. It’s very difficult living far from my family and my country. With my family, we are very close, but I’m living a happy life.

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