The doors to the living room open. bamboos to receive DIARIO DE AVISOS and give it an interview on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. It’s 8:30 p.m. on a Wednesday before their contest and there are already members eating something in the canteen and watching football before starting rehearsals. Primi Rodríguez, its director, is made to beg. If he is already a busy man, at this time he juggles to comply, and the truth is that he always complies. He enters through the door of the premises and, after greeting us, drinks his usual coffee before taking us to the fish tank, the place where he practices percussion.
I must admit that my nerves are making themselves felt and nostalgia invades me. Some time ago I spent a lot of time in this same place as a member of the Bambas children’s group, something that Primi perceives and lets me know. She then begins the interview about the origin of the murga, her infantile Bambas: “After the years, the children grew up and could no longer go out in infantile. Paco Padilla, Francis, Calero, Doña Mari… decided to found the murga Los Bambones”, she explains. From that time, when Primi was not yet part of the family, there are few anecdotes, but one of them is that “a bus broke down going up from the contest, they had to walk up from the Nuestra Señora de Candelaria Hospital.”
Primi Rodríguez arrived in Bambones in 1985, after the break suffered by the murga in 1983 and 1984. Since then she has fallen in love and has not left. “Paco Padilla wanted to get Los Bambones out again after two years and he pulled his brother to get people: he told me and a few others, and that’s where my journey began”, she affirms.
Then began the first alegrías de Bambones. In 1986 they won a Presentation award for the first time, a “joy to see that we could aspire to something of interpretation and because it was the first year of A la marcha Bambones and it had a tremendous impact”.
The Interpretation section was made to beg, arriving in 1990, a tarnished award because “that they gave us the third was a joy, but that they gave the first to Chinchosos, which was at that time when they separated from Bambones, imagine ”, he laughs remembering it. Many are the people who have made these 40 years possible, and Primi, when asked, recalls Paco Padilla, “who was the founder and director”; Francis Calero, Marcos Cotena, “the soul and essence of being bamboo”; Suspi, “bamboo and carnival to the bone”; Falo, “who always contributed to everything”, Jose María, don Pepe and doña Mari, “the soul of everything”.
be a bamboo
When asked what it is to be a bamboo, Primi is clear: “Be respectful, critical of your own murga”, to which he adds that “have the doors open to all the venues”.
The truth is that this murga was born and has grown under firm values, in which elegance and knowing how to be are the main engines. “A bamboo is good people, very responsible and accepts the rules with a good face, even if he does not agree,” she says.
So I ask him what he thinks remains intact after 40 years, and without hesitation he answers “that the lyrics are taken care of”. “He took care of himself in 85 and now.” To which he adds that “we always do everything ourselves: we don’t pay for lyrics, or for percussion, or for voices.”
And the style of Bambones does not change, “criticizing and the lyrics, that does not change. The most important thing is to sing; sing well, the second; the rhythms, the third, and the rest are decorations, which now we like to decorate”, remarks the director of the well-known murga.
We could say that Bambones has sung to Santa Cruz de Tenerife more than 100 different songs throughout its history, and when asking Primi which are her favorites, she begins to doubt, because there are few that she has not liked, although after a few seconds it is clear: “Escuelita everyone would tell you, and yes, Escuelita murguera, but also Disabled, from 2005; The Crisis, in 2009; And what list are you on, from 2010; The Banks, of 2013; Young and old, The Ghosts and What happened to…, in 2015; Demonstrations and Outraged, in 2019; offended; in 2022; We were going to come out better… All of the same style and phase”.
After a handshake, I ask him if we will have 40 more years of Bambones. Primi answers with a resounding yes.
