‘Lento’, the song released by the mestizo music band Caracoles last year, has undergone a transformation and will represent the label of the international movement’s campaign at a national level cittaslow. The orotavense band Thus, it becomes an ambassador of the Network of Spanish Municipalities for Quality of Life, CittaSlowSpain, through its musical message that reiterates the caracoleros philosophy and values to achieve a more just world, both in the human and in the natural, and now also to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
Last September 2022, a creative and cultural alliance was created between the La Orotava City Council, through the Department of Tourism, and the Caracoles group; a participatory process through which we are committed to defending the diversity of peoples and the slowlife spirit as an anchor and engine of transformation towards a better world
The town of La Orotava, the band’s place of origin, is the only municipality in the Canary Islands that has the seal of the international Cittaslow movement, which promotes values of sustainability, a slow and friendly life, in community, cultivation and local consumption … Caracoles created a musical work that he dedicated to this municipality in line with his way of seeing and being in life and in the world, and was complemented with a video clip in which La Orotava was portrayed in accordance with the values promoted by the campaign and the song of Caracoles.
The awareness and commitment deposited in the song to express the importance of the feeling of a global and respectful world from the local, La Orotava Cittaslow, have been recognized to the point that Caracoles has been chosen to put music and message in the campaign of the movement Nationwide from Cittaslow. For this reason, Caracoles has metamorphosed their song ‘Lento’ so that it now represents all the municipalities in Spain that have this label —Artà, Balmaseda, Begues, Begur, Benabarre, Bubión, La Orotava, Lekeito, Morella, Mungia, Pals and Rubielos de Mora.
Slow, like the CittaSlow movement, promotes living to the rhythm of the Earth, it is, therefore, the latest audiovisual work by Caracoles, which has the music authored by Fabián Rosquete (Caracoles percussionist), who accompanies Nuria Hernández (singer and leader of the band) also in the lyrics, with arrangements by the musicians from Caracoles and Jonás García (from Superstereo Recording Studio, where the song has also been recorded and mastered) based on the original idea of Mariluz Alonso (component de Caracolas, an entirely female project that stems from Caracoles) and Nuria Hernández, who opted to include the children’s voices of Elna Costa Domínguez, Martín Hernández Mendiguren, Manuela Álvarez Romero and Tayri Luis Falcón.
Now, ‘Lento’ transmits a common message to the twelve Spanish municipalities CittaSlowSpain, because —after collaborative work over several months— Caracoles has known and included the values of each one of them in the song. Likewise, to the initial video clip of the song Lento, which had images that went from the coast of La Orotava to El Teide, those of some of the twelve municipalities already mentioned have been added so that they can also be represented. Just as in the music of Caracoles there is always a mixture of very diverse rhythms and styles. Slow has become the common song of the twelve Spanish municipalities that have the CiKaSlowSpain tourism and quality seal; twelve individual and diverse municipalities, which have joined together in Lento to promote their popular festivals, their most traditional activities and their natural environment in a healthy and sustainable way.
