Excited. Happy. And grateful. This is how Cristina Lamar welcomes us from the Costa Brava, an emerging singer who is at one of the sweetest moments of her career: she is presenting her second album and, for the first time, has performed at home. And she has done it in style: on festival stages such as BARTS Festival or the Blaumarí Festival, two venues that firmly support emerging talent with stages and performances prior to the official concerts.
This excitement for what she is experiencing is noticeable in her voice and in her gaze. An artist who fuses Latin American music with her Mediterranean essence to create intimate, poetic, and truthful songs.
— Cristina, you define yourself as a "musical storyteller". Can you explain this concept better?
—I studied music, but I've always really liked poetry and telling stories. Obviously, I love being a singer, but it's true that I realized that what I liked most was writing stories and telling them in poetry. And being able to sing my songs with the sincerity of my heart made me realize that people connected with them because I am very sincere. Trying to make people know the real face of the story, all the good and all the bad. For me, I will first be a writer and narrator, and then a singer.
— So you are, above all, a poetess...
— I studied music and composed for other people, but I really liked writing narratives or poems. I thought that one day I would publish if the universe wanted it, and my poems became an album. I started to set them to music with the piano, and from there the first album was born and, obviously, this second one.
I really like to write, I always carry a notebook with me, and I think it's my way of romanticizing and understanding what's happening to me. If I go on a trip, I say the most absurd thing, like that one day it was sunny, or that you met someone and said good morning to a stranger. Then the day passes, and suddenly you read that diary and say: "It wasn't such a bad day." From this tradition, I started writing.
I always carry a notebook with me, and I think it's my way of romanticizing and understanding what's happening to me.
— You made a first book... which is an album of musicalized poems!
— I always say that my album is everything I have lived, all the stories I have lived, but accompanied by music and by the Mediterranean, which is where I have always written. I want the person, when they hear the album, to say that Cris is from many places, because it shows that she draws from many cultures. On the other hand, when I do recitals in a concert, I really like to talk and explain things, and sometimes I do a small a cappella recital; these are completely different formats. In my songs, the central axis is always the story born from writing, from the poem and from the narration.
— You were born on the Costa Brava, but you went to live in Colombia. Do you think this double identity is perceived in your music?
— Very much so. Whenever people tell me, I say that I am from here, from the Costa Brava, from the Mediterranean, and I think my way of being and living is very noticeable. And suddenly one day I went to Colombia and I fell very much in love with that culture. I didn't know it; I loved Mexican boleros or Brazilian bossa nova, but I didn't know Colombian music as much. I fell very much in love, the opportunity arose to start working there, and my project really started there.
Since all my album and all my music are my stories and everything I have lived, I soaked up a lot of everything I listened to, especially because in the process I started listening to Andean music, which comes from that part more from the mountains. And in this music there is an instrument called the Venezuelan cuatro, which is like a small guitar. It's very curious, because it's like an accent that mixes Catalan with Colombian. Obviously there are sounds and a very Mediterranean fragrance in the textures, but the guitars and percussions, everything is very Latin American. A great mixture, a great embrace between these two cultures that are very similar.
— You started making soul, R&B and music in English. But now you make a different kind of music, right?
— I feel like I'm on a journey and every day I'm evolving and testing my identity. I would say that this new album is very much framed in the folk-singer-songwriter genre with soul rhythms. When we started the album, I remember saying: "Wow, I come from making soul and now I'm making different music." But with an English producer we said that soul is called that because it is sung from the soul. The instruments we play are super acoustic, everything is recorded in block, live, that is, there are no layers or the cleanliness or perfectionism of today.
— I understand that this album was recorded in one go...
— The recording is called in white: we recorded everything like a concert. There is no metronome; the tempo is set by the percussionist, there is no fixed tempo. We did about 7 takes of each song and we kept the take that we felt best captured the energy, the spirit. It's not like we then make cuts and re-record here, but exactly as it is, as a block.
I think the beauty of it is that you can perceive the guitarist's interpretation, the filing of the fingers, or when we suddenly looked at each other and played without it being planned. And I think the magic of telling the story from minute zero, just as each one feels it, makes what you hear live the same as on the album; no Frankenstein has been made.
— And what would you say has been the inspiration for composing these songs?
— On this particular album, all are stories that I live. It was very strange, because I didn't know what was happening to me or what I was feeling, but I sing to beautiful love. I didn't know it, but I felt that I was very much in love and I didn't understand with what. Last year I was saying: "Oh, I want a beautiful love, what am I missing?", but I was writing in love!
When we recorded it, and especially after understanding a little what was happening, I saw that I was singing to the love that already existed: to friends, to traveling, to life, not just to a partner. Since then, the name Amor Bonito remained as a description, and it has been an album that has restored my faith that love is already present.
I was singing to the love that already existed: to friends, to traveling, to life...
— This 2026 you present your latest work, Una flor en la luna. Can you tell us a bit about it?
— We were recording the album and something was happening to me: you know when you have a very beautiful love but you think it's impossible for it to happen to you? You think that not everything can be so perfect and you close yourself off to it, as if it were as impossible as seeing a flower born on the moon.
Giving it this title was like realizing that I myself believed that all this was impossible. During the process I saw it as an unattainable dream, and now, having made the album, being able to present it and sing at home, proves exactly the opposite to me. For me, Una flor en la luna means precisely that: understanding that the most beautiful things, those that seem impossible, can come true if you believe in them.
Una flor en la luna means this: understanding that the most beautiful things can come true if you believe in them.
— This summer you performed at Blaumarí and BARTS, on the emerging artists stage. How was the experience?
— It was beautiful. I had never played my music here, I hadn't had the chance yet. Both spaces were incredible. Blaumarí was in the middle of the sea, 100% my ecosystem, and BARTS was in Barcelona, in Poble Espanyol, a beautiful space.
And it's very curious because you arrive at a space where you're like a village, a prelude to a concert with an already more massive audience. I think it's an incredible opportunity. It's a space that is very difficult to reach, a stage with an audience that you can't always have, but even so, I felt a lot of warmth from the people. Something very beautiful happened: I explain where I come from, what I want, and during the concert I encourage people to sing some mantras or try to internalize them. I was very afraid that this wouldn't happen, but people started to get excited and sing. For an emerging artist, being able to have these stages is incredible.
— Do you think this type of platform at festivals allows you to gain more visibility?
— Yes, totally. For example, at Blaumarí, after getting off the stage, many people who didn't know me at all came to talk to me and had stopped to listen to me. I feel that it's fantastic for making yourself known, and also because it acts as a huge loudspeaker for getting on stage. In fact, after Blaumarí I thought: "When I'm in Spain, I might need this boost more." Producers or people from the industry see you, and when it's over they come to tell you: "Look, Cris, we really liked it." It's like a chain that feeds itself.
I am very grateful, and also at both festivals people were super human and approachable. Without going any further, at BARTS a man came to see me who told me that he had gone to a totally different concert, but that my music had stirred up personal things for him. Wow, you never know where you'll find someone who truly connects with your message.
— As an emerging artist, I understand it's complicated to make a name for yourself. How do you work on that day to day?
— Oh, it's very difficult! At first I said: "I do everything myself," but little by little you start to team up with other people. When you start moving around Catalonia or the rest of Spain, you see the need to seek professional support for certain tasks. It's very hard: getting to festivals and getting paid is very difficult, but even managing to play without getting paid is not easy. But I have to tell you that all the festivals paid me, and I am very grateful.
I am a person who always pays my musicians; if the band, instead of five, can only be three, we will be three, but everyone gets paid, even if I don't earn anything. And besides being a singer-songwriter, you have to be a manager, a booker... From my point of view, being an artist is 30% of the work and the remaining 70% is running it like a businesswoman.
Being an artist is 30% of the work and the remaining 70% is running it like a businesswoman.
— Can you live off music or do you have to juggle like many artists?
— I juggle. I have many jobs and I'm not ashamed of it at all. I say it openly: I have a dream, which is this singer-songwriter album, and I also do a genre that is difficult to work commercially right away. I spend the whole summer doing everything. Cristina Lamar composes and sings her own songs, but I also do jazz gigs, bolero gigs, and I work in an office. I mean, whatever it takes to then have the absolute freedom to make the album I want exactly as I imagine it.
I could dedicate myself to something else more commercial, but I wouldn't make the music that represents me. The day I'm doing something I don't like, none of this will have been worth anything. If I had to win an award making music that I don't feel is mine, I would be a very sad person. If you have to juggle and combine a thousand things, you do it. And when people really ask me and say: "Cris, what are you doing now?", I explain my schedules to them without problems: from eight to four in the office, at four I start composing or managing the projects in Colombia, and at night I do gigs. And it's okay, I'm very happy.
From eight to four in the office, at four I start composing or managing the projects in Colombia, and at night I do gigs.
— In mid-2026, how do you think the music sector is doing and what changes do you think it would need to make?
— The sector lives too trapped in ephemeral trends, in the cult of quick fame and in big fireworks shows for fear that people will get bored. In addition, there is a lack of intermediate venues and sometimes too much airtime is given to projects that then don't work live. However, the public is starting to demand authentic and real music. The challenge is to nurture live performance so that people reconnect with art face to face, opting for proximity and sincerity above superficiality.
The public is starting to demand authentic and real music.
— And finally, Cristina, if you had to define your music in a single sentence, you would say...
— It's music made with the heart and for the heart.