Argentine singer-songwriter Fito Páez expanded his universe by publishing two books, including a travel log.
“Music is something beautiful and delirious. Sometimes I feel slightly out of time among the computers and the phone,” Páez said at a news conference in Bogotá, Colombia. “I’ve just stopped listening to (classical Austrian composer Joseph) Hayden, and it was a 30-minute trip in itself, with no drugs involved or the need to inform myself of something that I don’t know is true or not.”
Páez spent the last six months of the year on tour throughout America playing different concert formats, either alone on the piano or with a full band behind him. He was also invited to present his books — Diario de Viaje (Travel Journal) and La Puta Diabla (The Damn She-Devil) — at book fairs in Colombia, Mexico and Argentina.
Diario de Viaje focuses on the intimate side of his 2015 concert tour, in the story and the music. He collects musical anecdotes, both big and small; he reminisces about his friendships with Joaquin Sabina, Charly Garcia and Mercedes Sosa; and he discusses politics, travelling, his family and his feelings, excesses, health issues and his wildest erotic dreams.
“I felt I wanted to write; I didn’t have a story. I was in the middle of a tour. In those moments, your friends die, you get sick, your kids grow up. I read it after writing it and couldn’t help feel the impact. A diary is written with absolute freedom. You don’t have to explain anything to anyone because life is like that: delirious,” he explained.
Although he claims to have written in different formats, to Páez, writing is something he considers very difficult. Regarding the controversy surrounding the latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Bob Dylan, he is quick to point out: “Bob Dylan is not a musician that explores literature: Dylan is literature approached from the side of popular music. His texts and ideas are at any author’s level. The Nobels needed a bit of rock.”
Páez said he considers himself an artist, not someone waiting to be labelled. “I am a man who makes music; I don’t know if I’m a musician. I am a man who writes books; I don’t know if I’m a writer. I am a man who makes movies; I don’t know if I’m a filmmaker.”