We have quoted ourselves in Moscow, in Irun. In Irun always Moscow. What does this square have?

I have no great admiration for Moscow. However, I believed that Moscow was a place of the era of political reform, where we met then people on the left, but no, thanks to the historian I have known that Moscow has an older history than that. Even older is Urdanibia’s name, but curiosity, our grandmother Joxepak, Moscow, and Urdanibia, was called “Alameda.” I do not live far from here, Moscow is a nice place, but without idealizing.

Can you idealize something today?

My daily work is idealized, my daily work, my desire to maintain personal effort year after year. And I don't just mean myself, I'd like to try in general. Continue on the road to the most difficult times, work in the most dignified way, trying to give the best of yourself. It's strange. I believe in that.

This shows that your paths have been true to yourself. Throughout this long journey, many Goitiberas would certainly have been seen.

Yes, they're crises. And now I said, “Jabier, you made a record, that is, investment. You are performing concerts: seven events, nothing charged yet, and in the meantime, you have had to pay everyone: musicians, technicians, team…”. However, the illusion to move forward is imposed. Look, lately, the same among friends, and people start to give and "Osasuna!". I, along with health, say “… and you win!”. I mean, illusion. A veteran journalist asked me not long ago. “That’s the road you’ve come, Jabier: What makes you an illusion to move forward?”

And the answer?

“Let it be my best album!” And I was serious. And I'm convinced that if the last one I've done -- the Tonetti brothers -- is not the best one, it will be one of the best. That's the illusion. In our trade, I see a lot of people in a hole, depressed. That is why I attach importance to maintaining the illusion. It is essential. Of course, I am not who to give lessons to anyone. Musicians live difficult times.

They say that resisting is winning.

Yes, in our profession yes. Clean.

There's an interesting video on the web, from the interview that the Catalans did to you. Awards are mentioned, among others, and you say that the journey is the biggest prize.

That's where I am.

In the course of the river there are sections, springs, branches and meanderings… Where is your origin? Is it that year of five, which perhaps won the European Accordion Championship in the Netherlands?

That Javier, eight to nine years old, who sang a girl from Aoiz, is a manantial. A very bad song – necessarily bad – made in Spanish, because I still did not know Euskera. So my story begins in childhood. The collaborations with singer-songwriters and rockers are shown below. Two different ordinary worlds, if you will, but that I locked inside of me. I was a musical helper of many, but apart from that, there was also a thought beside him, especially with the singers. Imanol, Xabier Lete, Mikel Laboa -- along with them was the radar, and I think I learned a lot from them.

Despite the rockers and singers, there was a musical atmosphere in your house.

Yes, the first references I received in my childhood through my parents. Here's the musette. We heard a lot in our house. Parents loved the accordion. Also the trikitixa here. It wasn't just a musette. Of course, it was in adolescence, when the three brothers bought each other and started sharing each other with their friends. It was another time, another time between us: the former made known to the other what he discovered. That is how we are enriched. My two brothers give me credit, they say I was wearing records, but it's not just what I was doing. We were all doing it.

Many of us met you at Les Mechanisciens. I invent that always memorable song.

But before Les Mechanisciens, we should mention the Ja, ja album, which was very successful among children and young people. Les Mechanisciens, on the other hand, was Ja, a kind of an adult ja. But it didn't succeed. Make the first record, and so much. The second and the same. Third and similar. There was no way forward. At the same time, another factor was my attitude: “Jabier, start singing, start saying things in your own way, with no more cocks.”

You started your personal path, the one that characterizes your work: the personal path.

They say “own voice” in the literature, and I was obsessed with my own voice. Here, on the other hand, comes language. They say that our language is not an obstacle or a handicap, but I think it is sometimes a hindrance, but it also has advantages: when it comes to offering a personal voice, speaking in Basque helps a lot. Since then, I have worked hard on how to say it. It has certainly been an evolution. I've still been in Vitoria today, making a lecture to the students of Philology. Next to a song from the first album, I put the one from the last one. There were very smart people who immediately realized their evolution: personal work, readings, hearing of different music, jazz, concrete musicians…

This evolution was favored in Catalonia.

I got the lottery in Catalonia and I'm not talking about money. I do not think there is a way of expressing it that way, because what has happened to me is not normal. I have a great recognition there. Last year, for example, I was awarded the best concert inside the Barnasants festival. I can't imagine this here. I've had a lot of things happening in Catalonia. If I started to uncover what Catalonia has given me, I would never end.

No one is a prophet in his country.

The Xola de Bernardo Atxaga says that no one is a croquette in his village… Here it was harder for me to connect with the listener. In Catalonia, on the contrary, the answer was immediate. I started in small clubs – Harlem, La Cova del Drac… – but the sound immediately spread to all of Catalonia. Here it cost me a little bit more. Make the first albums and, au and birao! There are not many answers!

You say that if you started to discover what Catalonia has given you, you would not. Liverpool did not give it to you in Catalonia.

No, that had come back the other way. He met me, among others, Arthur Bernstein, director of the music school founded by Paul McCartney and showed interest in taking me there. He had doubts about the language, as the Chorists are very important there, and Bernstein had doubts about how they would manage with the Basque Country. In this way, I was succeeded by the American driver, the Swedish driver and the Catalan driver. Of course, even the three singers were admirable. That was very important to me. It helped me a lot to believe in myself. This is where it would cost me to believe in myself. It has helped me a lot to get out, Barcelona has helped me a lot, Madrid has helped me a lot, Liverpool has helped me a lot. Then you say: “We won’t be so evil! Go ahead!” If only you believe in what you do, it is difficult to move on. Let a Jackson Browne say that Kiko Veneno and you are the authors of the best versions that have ever done to you -- and, by the way, that every year your precious cookies are sent to you at this time -- [laughs] -- that helps a lot.

You've considered your music as a minority.

Yes, I have been with the label “for the selected minority”, but I have to start to change the mentality, because, for example, at the Durango Fair, Tonetti has had an unbeatable welcome... The albums edited by the Barnasants Festival, which was distributed here by the newspaper Berria, are also very good. I look at the minority, yes, but at the large minority. On the other hand, in today’s world, the presence and weight of culture is a huge loss. I find it terrible. That is what I have read to Richard Ford, and I agree with his view. Along with this, there is another fact: those of us who work in the world of culture are half lost, there is no way, the drift reigns, the writer, the music, the journalist… we are all inadvertently in the future. Maintain a critical attitude, be alert, try different formulas and maintain them. There is no more. If we give up, everything is over.

How do you make your voice heard in a world full of noises, at a time when you make us hear English music to the bones?

The effects of hyperstimulation on the new generations will be severe. That is also where pedagogy and psychologists are concerned. Music is nothing more than a branch. I'm up to my neck listening to music everywhere. We need silence. We will value music by silence. I have always called for silence, both in music and in general. On the other hand, in what situation does music now come to us? We hear in any meaningless support. I remember what I spent my first money on, almost 40 years ago: I bought a decent music team in Hendaye and took him home in hiding, in the smuggling. I've still kept it. The sound of the underside! Pure fun!

It is a joy to hear Jabier Muguruza without more help than voice and fingers.

I believe in that, there is nothing else. Last year I was called to do a concert in Camprodon [Girona, Catalonia]. Then, on the day of the concert, in the morning, I could play in front of the kids at the local music school. I was worried, but yes. Enter the room, about 300 children and young people, some of them very small. “What does this have to be? This is the disaster!” I thought. We started Mikel Azpiroz and I, piano, voice and participation of all those children and young people. We were an hour and a half, great. Silence was absolute. Communication works. I've been singing Tan petita to capella in Catalonia, and the atmosphere that was created around that was very powerful. Excellent.

From that atmosphere is your music.

I have made my personal bet, but, for example, listening to Fermin’s latest album – instrumentation, rhythm, atmosphere of New Orleans – and the result seemed very interesting to me. Everyone here has their voice, their characteristics, and they have to be given to them. What Suzanne Vega said: “I have a small voice to sing small stories.” It's important to know how to place yourself in the world. That is why we have to go a long way.

You guessed it.

I'm fighting. I am very demanding with myself, always asking, always searching, always searching. Very nonconformist in this regard.

There's a lot of work you've done. You are a musician, you are also a writer, you have also been an actor, you have made interviews. I have put with your book Interviews with soul to know what Javier would ask Jabier.

What would you ask? It is as follows: “Now it’s time to defend the Tonetti brothers because the album has just come out. In any case, what will your next bet be? Where would you like to go?”

Did you just take the record out and look for new ways? Don't tell me!

Yes, yes! I have not told you in vain! I've taken the fourteen discs that I've made and they clearly show a connection, something common, a vision and a conception of the world -- a voice of my own -- but there's also a search job on every record, a progression, and not necessarily to use more instrumentation, to undress, at a given moment. On the current album, we return to the jazz format in search of a concrete sonority, and above all, we prefer to be raw, in absolute silence – let’s say in the El Vendrell auditorium – without any effect. That's the search, in my case. Rather, to repeat what has been achieved, or to have the creator's own attitude and to be critical, to be risking each time with a step forward? That's what amuses me.