Extremoduro is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the rock groups most representative and well-known in the Spanish music scene of the past thirty years. The band led by Robe Iniesta occupies a privileged place in the universe of reference to the music of the latest generations.
It’s striking to see how his concerts bring together a broad spectrum of followers, from teenagers who start to be fond of the “transgressive rock” to the faithful more hardcore that monitor each of their movements. A single, an album, a tour of Extremoduro are, today, large music events.
How has gotten Extreme to stay in shape for so many years (and today, more than ever, when the tastes change at the speed of fiber optics)? While most artists find their, shall we say, “moment of glory”, Extremoduro remains on the playlists of all the devotees of the Spanish rock through the decades. There is no consensus to explain this phenomenon: the quality and seriousness of his instrumental music, the unique personality that no waiver of the experimentation, the staging of their live. And their letters, in which today we will talk.
The songs of Extremoduro form a complex universe that drinks mainly of irrationalism and vitalism. Though in its themes, dealing with issues as different as the love, the consumption of drugs, or the social protest, there is in the Plasencia a line of thought which seems to refer to the corpus of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900).
“Since you don’t want me, I want the animals,”
The philosophical system of Nietzsche, part of a historical analysis of the relationship between the human being and the nature. In the birth of tragedy in the spirit of music (1872), Nietzsche examines the origin of Greek tragedy (and, therefore, of Dramatic Art) in the context of the festivities held in honor of the god Dionysus, dating back to at least the sixth century.C. These parties would last several days, and in them, the music had a very prominent role. During the celebration, the greeks danced drunk and they dedicated their hymns and prayers to the forces of nature.
This communication with nature and the subsequent catharsis would be part of the “spirit dionisiaco of life”. Little by little, these parties were drifting towards formulas more codified, and thus arose the tragedy, in which the chorus represented an important role. It was the mission of the choir continue to appeal to the forces of nature while developing the action of the tragedy, in such a way that the public continued to find in these representations that catharsis original, the communion with nature accompanied by a purging of the spirit after witnessing the tragic destiny of the hero.
however, this vision of the tragedy as a celebration of the life and death was giving way to a perspective rationalist and ethics (in particular, from Socrates), which was determined to extract moral lessons of the art forms, giving priority to what apollonian versus what dionisiaco. Here ends the feeling of stupor and was born the critical positivist, that, for Nietzsche, entails the weakening definitive of the art: education and contemplation are imposed to the celebration Aresbet and participation.
Extreme, like Nietzsche, claimed the reconciliation with nature as a means to return to a vision irrationalist, emotional, of life. For Extreme, nature is not a refuge, but an entity, an individual, with which we aspire to merge:
“are leaving Me horns, don’t put yourself to the side, that I’m sweating manure, I grow the tail”. (I have them all, 1993).
through this merger, we will be able to desvincularnos prejudices, moral and celebrating our tragic destiny as part of our revocation, but without forgetting to enjoy:
“I Lose the reason when they come from my heart animals” (Cabezabajo, 1996).
“I don’t have love or god, live the life to sac”
To explain his genealogy of morals, Thus spoke Zarathustra (1883), Nietzsche uses the metaphor of the three transformations: the man starts by being a camel, that has to carry the burdens of guilt and contrition, typical of judeo-christian thought. He is a man who only understands life in terms of regret and of sacrifice, who expected a reward from the beyond as compensation for their suffering.
At a given time, the individual needs to break these chains violently as the start of a change of attitude. Religion ceases to be a handle, moral, and in the beginning, the man newly released is lost; you have to start from scratch, and your first instinct is to rebel violently. So living this transition Extremoduro:
“And I revuelco for the soil to start everything from scratch” (Third movement, 2008).
In fact, the entire album is symphonic The law is innate (the one that belongs to this fragment) could be interpreted as the story of this journey of abandonment and rebellion.
In any case, the references to freedom and the rejection of the chains of moral are common in the work of Extremoduro:
“not me ata short anyone, because I I turn off” (Pedrá, 1993).
The destructive stage (transformation into a lion, the second state nietzscheano) is required to reach the final stage of the superman, which we summarize below.
“I Want to be like a mule: stubborn in my most pure will”
The concept of will is the centre around which gravitates the entire thought nietzscheano, and is the central theme of the compilation posthumous texts The will to power (1901). Once freed from the guilt, the superman will be able to create a new scale of individual values, through their creative energy, and not through mechanisms adaptive or dialectical. The willingness nietzschean is, therefore, essentially individualistic, and the strain that can arise from it is a consequence of the relation between strong spirits and spirits weak.
This attitude impulsive, “eat the world”, is typical of the themes of Extremoduro:
“Of steel I’m from the head to the feet, and the sky is only a piece of my skin” (steel, 1992).
The only morally valid is that each individual is imposed, which serves to achieve their purposes:
“I air I fall in love, and I always do what I want” (Menamoro, 2002).
The philosophy of Nietzsche has always been controversial, as are the songs of Extremoduro. Probably, because none of them had ever had the need to please anyone. And that, precisely, you can e-file your transcendence. There is No doubt that the voice of Extreme, such as that of Zarathustra, will continue reverberating in the mountains for a long time.
David Navarro Martínez, Phd student in Literary Studies, Complutense University of Madrid
This article was originally published on The Conversation. To read the original.
