The cantaor Miguel Poveda offers his perspective on growing up in diversity based on his personal experience. In conversation with ALMA, the social network of "la Caixa" Social Work, the artist states: "I have grown up in absolute diversity."
Poveda explains that: "As a child, I remember the voices of women coming out of the windows and balconies of the houses, those women who sang. It was wonderful, because that Badalona was also a small Andalusia within a neighborhood of humble and hardworking people, where there was scarcity, but where musicality and joy also breathed."
"To begin with, my father, a man from Murcia, would play me records by Pink Floyd, The Beatles or Alan Parsons, and my mother, who is from La Mancha, by Bambino, María Jiménez or Manolo Caracol. My neighbors were from Extremadura, Galicia, Andalusia… And when I started living in Barcelona, my friends were from all over the world. Over time, with travels and the musicians I have worked and lived with, I have become aware that diversity enriches me, that it makes me grow, learn and form myself as a human being. I am impregnated with so many different things, with so much mixture, that I feel that this has been the fundamental basis for forming me into the person I am today."
«Diversity enriches you and makes you grow, learn and form yourself as a human being.»Poveda recalls: "I started singing at 15. Flamenco allowed me to awaken and listen to myself out loud; it allowed me to express things that, due to shyness or age, I was not able to say in a conversation. At that age I experienced very strong feelings that thanks to my music could bring out and listen to myself inside, through the singers and the singing. How can music not be important in the formation of children! If my child, who is now two and a half years old, who is starting to babble and sing, music generates a state of happiness and an emotion like euphoria that is wonderful."
For Poveda: "music also makes both children and adults understand the meaning of the word share. This feeling, along with other basic values for coexistence, is precisely what is intended to be instilled in the young people of the Seville neighborhood of Polígono Sur in the flamenco workshops of the Atenea Foundation, promoted by the "la Caixa" Social Project together with the Seville City Council and the Commissioner of Polígono Sur. Within the ICI Project, the objective of the workshops is to foster social cohesion and intercultural dialogue"
You can read the entire interview in ALMA the social network social, a new digital forum dedicated to the social sphere, which provides a new perspective on the present and future of society, based on an optimistic and diverse vision, and all the stories promoted by the "la Caixa" Social Project.