Photo by Fran Kiko

With Tulsa performing their soundcheck in the background we had the chance to catch up with musical artist Christina Rosenvinge. Blonde, graceful, and approachable. After exchanging a few pleasantries with her we became instant fans; not just of the music, but of Christina herself.

Vanessa Ceia: Tell us a little about yourself.
Christina Rosenvinge: I had my first band when I was fifteen.

VC: Here in Spain?
CR: Yeah, here in Spain. It was sort of a new wave band back in the eighties when the movida was happening, but I was too young and couldn’t go out at night until late, so I.. I had this band, Ella y los neumáticos, and that’s when everything started. Years later, I had a different band with another guy, called Alex and Christina. That was kind of a commercial pop band very inspired by French music from the eighties, and after that I started a song-writing career.

VC: You’re Spanish but you have family from—
CR: Uh, I’m Danish but I was born in Madrid.

VC: Do you speak Danish?
CR: I don’t, no, but…actually, it’s a strange family story because my father was a very conservative guy, so he came to Spain because he was such a big fan of Franco’s politics.

VC: Is this the first time that you’ve worked with Tulsa?
CR: Yeah. They’re opening for the show and we have a few musicians in common so that’s why we are going to travel together. We have about four or five more shows.

VC: Will you be doing any traveling outside of Spain as well?
CR: Mostly in Spain, but yeah I’m going to Chile, Buenos Aires and South America soon. That trip I’m going to be doing with my New York drummer, which is Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth, he’s the one I make records with and he comes to play with me when he has the opportunity.

VC: Is that where you normally record? In New York?
CR: In Hoboken, yes (laughs); in the Sonic Youth space. I’ll be there in May recording with Steve Shelley and Jeremy Wilms, who’s a bass player from New York—well, really, he isn’t from New York, he’s from London, but he lives in New York now. And he’s like my partner too and we’ve been playing together for ten years or so.

VC: Is your this new album going to be a similar style to what you’ve been doing over the last while?
CR: Yeah, it’s the same style that I’ve done in the lat one. We kind of have an idea of doing a project in English where the three of us are going to write songs together, but that’s been delayed for months and years but I hope that we’ll start on it again.

VC: You started off with three records in English, and then your anglophone phase seemed to have ended. Do you have any intention of working in English again?
CR: Not now, you know I live here in Spain and naturally my songs come out in Spanish now. Actually, I’m trying to write a couple of songs in English for this one project that I have and it’s kind of difficult for me, it’s not all that natural.

VC: What’s your emotional state when you produce your best work?
CR: I’m not sure, you know. Work comes out when I have a really steady discipline, like when I work everyday for several hours and start getting results. I try to do that everyday and have been doing that for the past five months. Not that I come up with something good (laughs) but I try to.

VC: What kind of crowd turns up at your shows?
CR: I get a very diverse crowd. There are really young people and there are people that are around fifty. It depends… there are people that have been buying my records for years and those that just discovered the last record and are into that one. The records in English weren’t all that known here (in Spain). People didn’t listen to them..I guess they were too experimental or weird or whatever. It was a different style, I was living in New York back then and it was a little more adventurous (laughs).

VC: What do you think of the music scene back in New York?
CR: For me it was such a big….you know, it was like going to school again. Being around all those people, not only the guys from Sonic Youth, but all the musicians and creative people there. All those people that just put out a record and work as waiters or whatever and are incredibly talented and wonderful…and that sense of community that everyone’s a part of. I thought it was really brilliant and refreshing. I got to play with people that were really great and it was all just for the fun of it. At that time I did a couple of shows with Tim Foljahn, and he was in my band, on the guitar, and he put out records with our same label, and Steve Shelley was in that band too.. Then there was hanging out with Smokey Hormel and playing in a band that did covers of Brazilian music with Sean Lennon and… It was just a lot of fun.

VC: Is there anyone that you’d really like to collaborate and one day get to work with?
CR: Sooner or later you get to meet everybody and play with everybody. That’s what I’ve done for years and it’s easier than it looks.

VC: You’ve played at an ATP festival. How was that?
CR: It was a lot of fun, really great and I was playing in between Television and Eddie Vedder (laughs) and it was so amazing.

VC: If you were to define your style of music how would you do it?
CR: It’s a cross between European pop…sometimes I’m inspired by Italian pop, like one song that I just wrote that’s very inspired by Adriano Celentano from the seventies who I really like. French pop too, but particularly sound wise it’s very inspired by New York pop music. So when everything comes together for me it’s very organic, but every time I play with American musicians they always say, “oh, you’re so European or Spanish” or whatever. They say that I have a different mindset. The way that someone who has listened to a lot of latin music will write a song… they tend to be more into the rhythm thing, more into different and adventurous patterns and mixing… At least people from Spain get all these crazy mixes, a lot of flamenco and sevillanas, but also Brazilian music and south American folklore, and from descent I’ve got the Northern European roots… I’m such a bastard (laughs). There’s nothing pure in me. I can’t point to just one place. In a way I’m a foreigner everywhere. That’s why I felt at home in New York. It’s like you can only become a New Yorker when you don’t belong to any particular land.