The spearhead of the electrocouple, sex symbol of the copla and total artist, Rodrigo Cuevas (Oviedo, Spain, 1985) is a phenomenon of the performing arts as well as of communication in its broadest sense. Rodrigo Cuevas has got a medium degree in piano and tuba studies at the Oviedo Conservatory as well as three years of Sonology in Barcelona.
Rodrigo Cuevas likes to surround the traditional song with the cabaret and the cuplé, he enjoys making electronic music converse with humor, sensuality and social criticism, turning his shows into an experience with a denomination of origin. Trópico de Covadonga is signifying the artistic consolidation of Rodrigo Cuevas. In this show, the third in his private account, the folkloric and electronic agitation, the field divism and humour, the elegant eroticism, hedonism, the celebration of non-negotiable rights and a staging that in the end leaves no one indifferent, they are conjugated in a formula that everyone would like to clone but that nobody, except him, knows how.
During 2020 and 2021, this singer, composer, multiinstrumentalist and folkloric agitator is representing Trópico de Covadonga all over the country, filling all the capacity for which he stops: from the Palau de la Música in Barcelona to the Fernán Gómez Theatre in Madrid, the Colón Theatre in Coruña or the Rambleta in Valencia among countless cities scattered throughout the Spanish geography.
Trópico de Covadonga revolves around the different codes of ancestral and current ways for courtship, for the “ronda” (flirt), for love. It is proposed as a contemporary popular songbook in which the vehicle to narrate the music and eternal stories that folklore provides us are electronics, humour, performance and contemporary musical codes. Trópico de Covadonga is the parallel that passes through Covadonga, an invented tropic that crosses Asturias but goes around the world. That is the perspective that Cuevas chooses to look at from a point far removed from ethnocentrisms, which is why the show vindicates a good number of people from the rural world.
Trópico de Covadonga reveals a less cabaret Rodrigo Cuevas who focuses his energy on singing like a nightingale, dancing like a starfish and stringing together a show that eclipses us both for its musical category, its aesthetics and its critical discursive imprint. The release of his second studio album, which nurtures this show, took place in December 2019 (Aris Música, distributes Altafonte). The recording was made at the Calamar Studios under the direction of Raül Refree, producer among many other artists from Rosalía, Lee Ranaldo or El Niño de Elche.
We are faced with an album full of coherence, oozing contemporary findings, genuine sounds of tradition, flashes and samplers, electronic metaphors, own compositions, versions, tributes, hymns. Manual de Cortejo reaps unbeatable reviews and climbs into the Best (in 2019 and 2020) lists both for the national generalist media (El País, El Mundo, Radio 3 ...) as well as for the specialized music press (Rockdelux , Mondosonoro…). Rodrigo has received the MIN Awards for “Revelation Artist” and “Best Fusion and World Music Album”.
2021 is being the year of its consecration at the Spanish level and surely also, that of international exploration with visits to the United Arab Emirates, the United States, France, Portugal, etc. Trópico de Covadonga is a unique stage concert, it responds to as many certainties as it proposes seduction unknowns.
Rodrigo Cuevas: Voice and Percussion.
Rubén Bada: Guitars, Percussion and Chorus.
Mapi Quintana: Backing vocals, Double Bass, Vocoder, Panderos, Palmas.
Juanjo Díaz: Percussion.
Tino Cuesta: Synthesizers, Chorus, Programming, Accordion.