Mario Alexander Parraguez Sepulveda
Joaquín Andrés Alfredo Parraguez Sepulveda
While walking down the beach promenade lined with restaurants in the Málaga neighborhood of Pedregaleco on a chilly February afternoon, I see and hear two young musicians dressed in black. Mario is sitting on the promenade wall vigorously playing the cello using a bow with frayed horsehair slashing in all directions while wearing a wide-rimmed black hat and thinly knit gloves that expose his fingers. Joaquín, of trim and quaint stature, stands next to him in sunglasses playing the violin. Both have long black hair flying behind them like manes in the breeze. What emanates from these two classical instruments can’t be farther from Bach or Beethoven. When the rousing chorus arrives, I hear myself singing the AC/DC song Highway to Hell. It’s brilliant! When I sit down to talk with brothers Mario and Joaquín, the ease and fluidity with which they interact and finish each other’s thoughts is uncanny. They operate as on entity unlike any other two I’ve seen. Neither seems to exist without the other.
I have 23 years old. I am 29 years old. We come to Málaga for the university with two scholarships to make music for video games. We arrived August 28, 2023. The school is EARTES. Escuela Internacional de Artes del Entretenimiento. We have visa for 2 years. We start this course on-line in Chile. The class is only virtual. We found it on Instagram. My brother saw the publicity and tell me. A masters in video game music, like movie soundtrack. In Chile, we have a band for video games, and we studied to make the video game music. The band is Polysteichon. We made three tours around the country. All live shows. Thousands of people. Big arenas. We play maybe 40 minutes - one hour. No break. We don’t drink water. Two-thousand people. The main aim now is to make a band here in Spain. People like so much these concerts. The money is very good. We live only from Polysteichon money. We play events maybe two times for a month.
The first person who started music is my brother. I started with music at 10 years old. I started music at 17, but we danced because my mother is a teacher of folklore music. I started to play violin in orchestra in a little town where we live, San Fernando. South two hours traveling from Santiago by car. In this little town have a little orchestra. We see the concert, and I also listen to André Rieu, a violinist. I always like the music from cartoons. I studied to be a lawyer. My brother started taking class and I accompany to the class and wait for him and one day, one person said, “You come here all the days. You don’t want to learn this instrument?” The people show me the cello and I say, “Wow, I love it,” because I listen to Apocalyptica play heavy metal. I don’t know the name of this instrument, but I love it. I say, “Of course.” I learned very fast and traveled to Peru, and we travel to the south of Chile only to play this instrument. I played this instrument 8 hours all day. I don’t know nothing from music, but I want to play like Apocalyptica. Study, study, study. I come to the school, and I play all the day. I think, “Oh wow, I make money with this instrument. I travel with this instrument. Fuck lawyer.” In the last year from law school, I abandoned. I travel to Santiago for private music school. We won a scholarship from Orchestral Regional. I win the best player in the orchestra and get scholarship for private conservatory. I finished the conservatory two years ago. Normally, it’s 5 years in conservatory, but I finish in 2 years.
I know the piano, too. Maybe I start when I have 13 years. When I know the violin and the sheet music, I start a little to play piano. I learned myself. I always want to play the piano typical music for video game music, Mario Brothers and more. When I have 20 years, I make the classical violin and piano. I play what I want.
One year I tell my brother, we go to play in the street. My brother has 12 years and I have 17, and we play together. We practice and visit my grandfather in a little town with beach and river. We always stay there all the summer and play music. We play together. Always together. We feel excited and good. We make good money in this place. We can buy toys and beers and play video games. We spend all our money in the video game arcade. We make money for all the cousins for all the night! We played every night 2 hours. In this time, I learned to play the cello standing. We have no chairs. Complicated to travel with chairs and cello.
In our town, San Fernando, we play one day a week in one supermarket called Tottus. Inside. Every Wednesday. They call us The Boys of Tottus. The supermarket name. We are walking in the street and the people say, “Hola, the boys of Tottus.” We make money, and we have a little famous in this city. Later, the people say, “Oh, I have a wedding, you can play?” And we building building more.
My brother won a school scholarship. I had scholarship also, but I abandoned the private conservatory because it was very expensive, and I want to learn popular music. I studied classical music two years. Then I study electric guitar with 22 years old.
I enjoy playing on the street. I enjoy coming to a restaurant or city and see the people with my instrument and nobody knows me, but in his mind I say, “I’m going to play here and you are going to listen and you’re going to clap and pay.” And the people enjoy it and enjoy more the meal more with the music. If the people enjoy our music, we are happy. If we don’t have the need to make money, maybe we don’t play in the street. Now we have the need to make money, but I enjoy the street. I very like the street because I meet new people just for playing in the street. I make contacts and friends and meet other musicians. All the days are different. New place with new music. Only happens in the street.
In Chile, in our town we teach the children. My brother was a teacher of piano, and I was teacher of music theory in the community in the same school we learned, House of Culture. We teach video game music. With the pandemic, I have one idea to make a band for video games and we make it. Our band is not known, so we go to the street and we play and sell a CD. Now we study to compose for big video game companies.
In Málaga, we play every day. In the good day, we make 120 Euros all day. Bad day, 40 Euros. In August we play in another town, Benalmádena, too much people, and we make all the day 150 Euros. We always ask the restaurant, to have a good relation with the manager or boss, but we don’t need it because we play in public space.
We will not go back to Chile. Here is a different reality. Because it’s a good life, a quiet life, personal security walking in the street. More dangerous in Chile. In Chile, one time some guy came in the night in the park and put something in the back of my brother and said, “Give me your instruments and your cell phone.” We just finished a concert, and I say, “OK, take the phone but not the instruments.” I say, “Ok, you can take the phone but if you take my beer, we are going to fight!” After the concert we buy beers to celebrate and we say, “You can take the phone but not the beer or violin.” They take the phones and go, but not the beer. We will stay here in Spain anyway legal or illegal. We feel immediately when we come to Málaga that we will stay. Our future is here. All in. We make some money in Chile, but we want more.
In Chile, they call us back for two concerts for November last year to play in the Pan American Games in the National Stadium for Egames, but we didn’t go. Our life is here. Don’t exist video game bands here.
We go to Madrid now to make audition drummer and bass player and the video game player for our band. We play the street now a lot for money to move to Madrid. The first mission is to make the video game band and play in the street for people to know us. We do this in Torremolinos with drum track and bass recorded. We play at a festival for tattoos.
When we play in the center in Málaga in Calle del Marques de Larios, the police stop us. They tell us to go to the port. They are very nice. If you go back to play, they maybe can take the instrument. Two hundred Euros to recover your instrument. You see the flute man in the street? They took is flute 20 times and this guy go to music store instead of recovery the instrument! The people from Spain say Málaga is the worst city to play music. I don’t know why.
We like to play popular music but more security making video game band. We like to play classic metal rock. Our name is The Strings of Rock. We play Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Metallica, AC/DC, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson.
We are like twins. We talk the same at the same time. When we were young, we fight too much. But when I start the music, we think the same, we like the same. We have the same objective. We can not stay separate. I am nothing without my brother. When I play with my brother it is a magical time. With my brother it is special. When I play with my brother, it is something different. No competition. We are together. My mother tell us, “The only person to stay with you all your life is your brother.”