El futuro ya está aquí - La musica de la Movida Madrileña

Info: When I travel, I like to listen to the music of the places I'm visiting. Not everything, of course. The goal is to discover local music that I don't know, that connects with my preferences and that resonates with the sense of the journey I'm taking. It may be classical, jazz, electronic, folk, but more often is pop and rock. With Madrid, where I'd planned to spend a week in August, initially I had some problems. All my usual sources went 404: not found, make a flamenco playlist and shut up.

Until I met Almodovar. 

Getting back to his first movies, especially Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980) and Labyrinth of Passion (1982), has been the key to open the crazy door of la Movida Madrileña. I finally found what I was looking for. This is when Internet still shows all the astounding power and kindness that made me fall in love with her on the demise of XX century: starting from Wikipedia and digging deeper in the mine of old Spanish articles and YouTube videos, I got a list of bands, albums and songs that Spotify immediately metamorphosed in listening pleasure. 

Then, some weeks ago, a friend of mine told me: "You're into la Movida Madrileña? Oh, I've a book about it". Friends can be astounding, too. The book is El futuro ya está aquí by Hector Fouce: it has been published in December 2006 and it provides the skeleton and the chapters of this playlist. I haven't included all the songs and artists Fouce wrote about (I left out songwriters and pre-Movida acts that in the book serve as context) and I shaked it up a little. 

La Movida Madrileña was a cultural, social and artistic movement mainly encapsulated in the first half of the 80s. Spain was just out of four decades of Franco dictatorship: it completely missed the Sixties pop revolution (if we don't consider the Real Madrid Yè-yè team) and - from a stranger's perspective, coming from another space and another time - it's interesting to re-listen to la Movida music as a collective explosion of young energies, producing a vibrant composition of punk, post-punk and new wave tunes, always sung in Spanish, that - unlike what happened in UK, for example - didn't germinate as a reaction/escape from the music of the Sixties and Seventies, from progressive, hard rock, disco or Pink Floyd. La Movida Madrileña sounds like a bizarre, postmodern and colourful mix with "no future" (like punk) and "no past": a really strange creature. It has been the perfect soundtrack to my personal peregrinations through Goya, Malasaña, calamares y football stadiums. 

Source: El futuro ya está aquí by Hector Fouce

Date of publication: December 2006

Spotify playlist latest update: 17th August 2017

Spotify direct links: HTTP / URI

Full list

I. El rol central de la musica en la cultura
1. Radio Futura - Enamorado de la moda juvenil
2. Nacha Pop - No necesitas mas
3. Alaska y los Pegamoides - Bailando
4. Mecano - Perdido en mi habitacion
5. Radio Futura - Dance Vd.
6. La Mode - Aquella cancion de Roxy
7. Paraiso - Para ti
8. Mamà - Ya no volveras
9. Nacha Pop - Visiones
10. Kaka De Luxe - Musica para embrollar

II. El valor del momento presente
11. Mecano - Hoy no me puedo levantar
12. Ejecutivos Agresivos - Mari Pili
13. Radio Futura - Un africano por la Gran Via
14. Derribos Arias - Branquias bajo el agua
15. Paralisis Permanente - Quiero ser santa/Caja de ritmos
16. Kaka De Luxe - Pero me aburro
17. Radio Futura - Muchachita
18. Gabinete Caligari - Cuatro rosas
19. Almodovar y McNamara - Suck it to me
20. Mecano - Maquillaje
21. Esclarecidos - Arponera
22. La Mode - Enfermera de noche
23. Radio Futura - Cinco semanas en globo
24. Los Secretos - Dejame

III. La experiencia del tiempo, la vivencia del espacio 
25. Mamà - Ya no volveras
26. Pistones - El pistolero
27. Alarma - Frio
28. Nacha Pop - Nadie puede parar
29. Radio Futura - Ivonne
30. Paralisis Permanente - Autosuficiencia
31. Kaka De Luxe - Pero que publico mas tonto tengo
32. McNamara - Me voy a usera
33. Radio Futura - Escuela de calor
34. Nacha Pop - Chica de ayer

IV. El imaginario cultural de la movida
35. Alaska y Los Pegamoides - Horror en el hipermercado
36. Radio Futura - Divina
37. Vulpess - Me gusta ser una zorra
38. Los Nikis - El imperio contraataca
39. Alaska y Los Pegamoides - Bote de Colon
40. McNamara - Gran Ganga
41. Aviador Dro - La chica de plexiglas
42. Radio Futura - La estatua del Jadin Botanico
43. Alaska y los Pergamoides - La rebelion de los electrodomesticos
44. Aviador Dro - Nuclear sì, por supuesto

45. Gabinete Caligari - Que Dios reparta suerte