“If another trailer like that passes me by, I won’t tell about it”

The disappearance of oneself, the cancellation. How difficult, how complicated it is to get out of something like this. Anni B Sweet has gone through a terrible period of pain and darkness that he finally overcame thanks to music and that has given rise to this “Happiness” (Subterfuge, 26).

Anni B Sweet She went through a period of three years in which she lost the ability to communicate with the people she loved most and in which she looked inside her being and only saw a gigantic cloud in black and white that did not let her move forward. “Nothing came out, I didn’t know how to explain to my friends what was happening to me. I felt ridiculous, because something very big had happened to me and I was incapable of externalizing it. And then, little by little, with music, therapy and trying hard, I started again to say ‘Damn, we’re already removing the little clouds and I’m finding myself again.'”

“Happiness”his fifth album, is a piece that is full of color and shows deep gratitude to the music that helped him open his eyes and activate his body. To be able to move forward. We are left with Anni B Sweet at Pandora’s Vox, a rehearsal space in the center of Madrid, to analyze this emotional reboot and the necessary final point that their new album represents. “I was reading a lot of Spinoza and I liked what he said about joy. About how it was a kind of enhancer for the being, that increased people’s ability to act. And that touched me a lot, because I had a very bad streak. At that time, I started listening to Gal Costa, Brazilian music, tropicalia, that psychedelia of the sixties… And I loved how they told very deep things and very complicated situations. But, they did it with a lot of rhythm, a lot of joy. So there was a moment when every morning I got up and the first thing I did was put on that music. I saw that my body was moving, I was mentally exhausted, but my body was moving and I thought the body knows, before the head, that we are getting better, that this is getting better.”explains Ana herself.

“You have to have a certain calm in your head to be able to generate things”

It is a brave, strong and honest album with which to let go, breathe again and learn to live with the person you are in the present. “It has been a time of analysis, but I didn’t analyze myself because I couldn’t find any solution within myself. But I did think about why all that was happening to me, how I could have gotten in there. And the truth is that I didn’t have an answer. In the end, intuition, moving forward… that was the answer.”. Thus, little by little, Ana traced a path through the songs that told her story, how she managed to get out of a chaos that was devouring her as there were no limits that could stop her. And he did it without any desire for revenge. “I think that these types of beings, and situations, you really create in your mind. Because maybe you need that to be the case. I came from another relationship, which wasn’t so bad. Honestly, it was a pretty good relationship in Granada. But then everything else was chaos. So of course, sometimes you generate the story, right? In ‘A Place to Be’ I say it: ‘We could pretend that the sun has risen, that inside this house there is order and control.’ I could imagine that this hurricane is pleasant.’ Well, that’s what I was doing. I couldn’t, I was doing it. It’s been two very dark years, or rather three and a half.

One of the emblematic songs of the album when it comes to talking about how everything ended up fading into nothing is “After shining”, a song about death and transformation. “Those lyrics play with very dark things. Thinking about how this situation or this person can come back. That song makes me a little afraid to listen to it and hear myself sing it. Because it’s a kind of when you’re calm, you’ve gone back to being you. You with yourself and your little things. If another truck like this comes to me again, you know? If another trailer like this passes me by, I won’t tell about it. That song talks about how something that shined so brightly, has become something else. Where has all that light gone, if it was enormous? A little bit making the comparison with the sun. Where does it hide when it is not there with all the light it gives off?

Despite everything, Ana is finally experiencing a stage of happiness with the wounds already closed. Surrealism and magical realism derived from Breton, Cortázar or Juan Rulfo. The support of Santiago Auserón or Miren Iza (Tulsa), both with stellar collaborations on the album. The wonderful songs of Lole and Manuel, Caetano Veloso or Ninos Mutantes. Everything has been fundamental and an incredible refuge to move forward and reach what is “Happiness” as an album in the present. Because, Ana herself explains well that without achieving peace nothing is possible. “When you’re in there, writing songs… I don’t know. I can’t do that. Although sadness is also beautiful and we use it as an engine to create and write, I think you have to have a certain calm in your head to be able to generate things.” With everything gone and the battle against the dragon won. Now all that’s left is to go out dancing to celebrate.

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