Brutalismo
Brutalismo will be Isabel Do Diego's new work in the form of a concert-theater performance. A site-specific project designed to be shown in different architectural spaces beyond those built for live arts. Its album format will take the form of an EP with three or five new tracks.
In Brutalismo , Isabel Do Diego asks the following questions:
Where does the folklore of the 21st century begin and end?
Is electronics, as a permeable genre, its most inherent container?
Is it possible to create an atavistic-musical universe in the 21st century?
To imagine, create, and materialize Brutalismo o, Isabel Do Diego is interested in the most atavistic and minimalist practices of folklore in relation to its sound, its musicality, its festivity, and the way of putting the body on stage for its execution. The body as a total instrument. The body-medium that needs to be shown, as austerely as possible, to embody the music in the most direct and intense way. To penetrate the audience and inhabit electronics as folklore itself.
For this, Isabel Do Diego will create a musical dramaturgy by choosing the rawest, most rhythmic, and powerful tracks from all her albums, intertwining them with the new tracks from Brutalismo EP. She will also update sounds and melodies so that this new concert-theater performance is experienced as a unique event in line with her own stage codes.
As has been the case since her second album, Isabel Do Diego is creating a new instrument: Gavión, with which she will translate to music what has been previously mentioned and bring it to the stage by using the body in an unconventional, non-academic manner. Gavión will be made of stainless steel and virgin wood, all connected to software. In this instrument-machine, the body, as a living being, is the necessary bridge for the music to flow.
It is in Brutalismo where Isabel Do Diego will close a seven-year cycle and propose a robust and solid scenic-musical journey. A universe between the atavistic and timeless realms of folklore and electronics. A superhuman performance where Isabel Do Diego will unfold a polyhedral, vigorous, and sparkling electronic base that will serve as the foundation for traditional and austere vocal melodies, which will transmute through a body-medium in full vital brilliance. Moreover, the initial idea is to expand the team and involve other musicians-performers to develop and amplify this stage production.
Isabel Do Diego
Isabel Do Diego –the alter ego of Andalusian artist Juan Diego Calzada– develops, in her musical and scenic work, an austere, brutalist, and sacralized folklore.
The electronic quejío of Isabel Do Diego opens a fleeing body that traces a new perspective on Andalusian folklore. Her music is a folklore prosthesis that transcends the spaces the flesh cannot inhabit. A hybrid being. A body that, on stage, walks between the human, the animal, and the spiritual.
Between rural familiarity and futuristic estrangement, Isabel Do Diego inhabits a scenic universe of screams and whispers, traditional melodies alongside broken sounds, rural and industrial echoes, heretical messages and prayers, sexual fantasies and chaste emotions. And lots of beats, samplers, and synthesizers. Her singing and dancing are monstrous and of sacralized electronics. A scenic trompe-l'oeil that, as an allegory, is neither rational nor classifiable but shows the mystery we hold beneath our skin in the form of a musical ceremony.
In March 2020, she released DEPUEBLO, her first album. It was included in the exhibition “Romper el Aire” by Pedro G Romero for the Alarcón Criado Gallery in Seville and was chosen among the ten best roots music albums by Mondo Sonoro magazine. She visited various festivals such as Monkey Week (Seville), Flamenco viene del Sur (Seville), and Sâlmon (Barcelona).
Isabel Do Diego has also been an artist-in-residence at SONORIDAD.ES 2020-2021 curated by Daniel Valtueña for the KJCC center in New York.
In March 2022, she released BESTIA SAGRADA, her second album, which ended in collaboration with Maria Arnal on the final track “Cataliza.” The live show of this second work premiered at the Conde Duque Center (Madrid) and has also visited the Festival La Orgullosa (Barcelona), Córdoba Ciudad de las Ideas, La Madraza in Granada, Flamenco EÑE off in Madrid, the MIL Festival in Lisbon, and the MaF Festival in Málaga.
In April 2023, she released ROZADURA, a six-track EP created during a residency and concert series at the Flora Festival in Córdoba 2022. It was performed live in three emblematic courtyards of Córdoba’s Historic Center (Palacio de Orive Courtyard, Las Campanas Courtyard, and San Basilio Courtyard).
In March 2024, she released her first vinyl A CARNE VIVA · A live-recorded concert in vinyl format, recorded and cut live by Alhaja Records. The concert-vinyl was held at the Noble Hall of the Convent of Sant Agustí, Barcelona.
In November 2024, she released GOZO JONDO, her second EP with six tracks created during the Los Tientos creation residency in Granada 2023. Its translation into a concert-theater performance premiered at Teatros del Canal, Madrid.