ROSALÍA: Neo-Flamenco and the Disruptive Glam of Broken English

Barcelona's new pop queen is growing in popularity at a rapid pace by offering a balance between Spanish folk culture, technological experimentation and international standards of artistic production. After invading her home country's collective intelligence, she is currently engaged in building her personal brand abroad.

'La Rosalía' upholds her statements in Spain by relying on elaborate syntactic constructions and technicalities, as well as displaying an apparent confidence both in expertise and in her personal vision. However, this ability to express herself so precisely fades away when she has to speak in English.

Following Spanish grammatical patterns, she mistakenly conjugates 'people is', instead of 'people are', as well as overusing 'like' to act out dialogues due to a lack of descriptive verbs. Yet occasionally, something unexpected happens: she speaks in Spanish even though she is not being understood.

On the red carpet at the Grammys, on Zane Lowe's Beats 1, Billboard, Elle, ET... regardless of the monolingualism and position of whoever is interviewing her, she switches to Spanish to verbalize exactly what her limited English is preventing her from doing. Some examples are:

- “I don’t want him… ‘como que se asuste’…” - Ent. Tonight Interview, 2018

- “The ones from Spain they have like little… ‘¿Cómo se dice clavos?’, […] I’m gonna ‘dejar aquí mis labios rojos’…” - ASMR Interview, W Magazine, 2020

- “Yo también, yo también” - Grammy Red Carpet, Billboard, 2020

- “I was like ‘con angustia’ […] ’vale, pero’…” - Zane Lowe Apple Beats 1 Podcast, 2020

- “They used to do like this old flamenco that nobody… ‘ellos como que inventaron algo’… they created something - Song Association, Elle Interview, 2020

- “My style icon is Lola flores ‘me gusta mucho’, […] okay, ‘puntualizo que’, I didn’t shoot with Antonio Banderas” - Flashing for Answers interview, Billboard, 2020

Source: El País

Those seconds of disruptive friction (until she refocuses on English again in order not to confuse the interviewer) portray publicly a reality: The reality of not knowing English and not feeling dependent on it to validate one's ideas in an international context. The fact that she does not lower her gaze or express any kind of inferiority feeling for not knowing how to express herself in English, leaves an impact.

When she speaks in Spanish, the generated scene introduces the viewer into a new decoding of the situation: should it be the presenter the one who has to learn Spanish or is it Rosalía’s duty to brush up on her English?

Therefore, Rosalía’s 'poor' English is her best ally in completing her 360º marketing strategy. Her 'brand experience’ expands, impregnating any of her international appearances with bravery, exoticism (at least from an American ethnocentric point of view). Moreover, it seems to be appealing: Harry Styles asked her to dub the narration of his latest MV 'Adore You' in her peculiar English. At the same time, she reinforces her national brand, as Spanish youngsters seem to feel identified, given the great amount of user-generated memes about her.

Her Spanish interruptions converge in harmony with the rest of the messages transmitted through each of her actions: covering ‘Las Grecas’ in Coachella, being referenced by J Balvin in his latest hit ‘Ritmo' (2019) due to her Castilian slang, praising Lole and Manuel in an interview with Elle, or, culminating her reign over Spain’s culture, performing 'Juro Que' surrounded by flamenco guitars at the Grammy 2020 awards.

That performance marked history by re-instrumentalizing the end of 'Malamente' with the edited chopped vocals of the rapper Offset. It illustrated a combination that was unimaginable until then and showed that a new flamenco can exist as a result of synergies between urban musical cultures.

Now that the commercial potential of her versatile music style has been proved, Rosalía should never perfect her English, since her particular neo-flamenco can probably only remain trendy in a fully coherent marketing universe.

The audience needs to be reminded of her Spanish origins and bravery through every input. Hence, pursuing a different branding from the mainstream and therefore playing on a separate league could benefit her.

In other words: There is a limbo between the scarce English of V from BTS, which prevents him from communicating, and the chameleonic English of Swedish pop-princess Zara Larsson, who loses the identity privilege in the competition of the saturated US market. Thus, La Rosalía depends on the glamourization of that language-limbo she stands on.

Top-artwork and text by Alberto Méndez  ____________________________________________________________

References:

EL PAÍS. 2019. Vídeo: Rosalía Lleva A Las Grecas Hasta Coachella. [online] Available at: <https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/04/17/videos/1555500582_934037.html>.

Genius. 2020. ROSALÍA (Ft. Offset) – Juro Que / MALAMENTE (Live At The 62Nd Grammys). [online] Available at: <https://genius.com/Rosalia-juro-que-malamente-live-at-the-62nd-grammys-lyrics>.

Genius. 2020. The Black Eyed Peas & J Balvin – RITMO (Bad Boys For Life). [online] Available at: <https://genius.com/The-black-eyed-peas-and-j-balvin-ritmo-bad-boys-for-life-lyrics>.

Nytimes.com. 2020. La Conquista Global De Rosalía. [online] Available at: <https://www.nytimes.com/es/2019/11/17/espanol/opinion/rosalia-grammy.html>.

Ruiz, M., 2020. Harry Styles Shares Rosalía-Narrated Video For New Song “Adore You”: Watch. [online] Pitchfork. Available at: <https://pitchfork.com/news/harry-styles-shares-new-song-adore-you-listen/>.