Merry Christmas from Madrid! Vanesa Martín, Omar Montes, India Martínez, Chucho Valdés and more share their Christmas memories and wishes with Billboard and Starlite Madrid.
Vanesa Martín: Being at home, with my dogs, my family, cooking, being with my friends, not having any obligations. And that’s it. I’m going to repeat that as a ritual, like a commandment.
Omar Montes: In my house, we like to get together. We prepare the food all together and put up the tree.
Fina Grosso: Does your grandma do anything special?
Omar Montes: Yes, complain about her leg, that it hurts … Well.
India Martínez: It’s always been related to music, you see. The first one that really impacted me was the karaoke that they gave me. I mean, the machine with the mics, I went crazy. A piano.
When at a slightly older age, already at 13, I got my flamenco guitar, which was like God.
Sigal Ratner-Arias: That really changed your life.
India Martínez: There I signed up for classes, um, and I started making my songs.
Chucho Valdés: Well, I tell you, at Christmas I always ask for health for all my family and that we always stay united, always. And the rest, the rest we get ourselves. With health one can fight as far as possible. You won’t believe me because for a kid, a bicycle, a bike, a pair of skates … This isn’t an exaggeration, it’s real. It was when my dad gave me the book with the 32 sonatas by Beethoven. The 32 …
Ara Malikian: And something about Christmas? Well, “St. Matthew Passion” by Bach.
Nil Moliner: Well, look, my favorite tradition is- I am Catalan and in Barcelona, in Catalonia, we do it’s a log that’s called the tió, right? The “tió de Nadal.” It’s a wooden log, uh, that is a magic log. You have to feed it during Christmas and then, on the night of the 24th, with some sticks, you hit the log and this log poops out gifts. It’s like that.
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