They define you as a singer, “Maider Legarreta, singer,” although you’re still studying music.

I'm studying, but I've been studying music since I was a kid. On the other hand, I started studying singing five years ago. I went to study music at the age of 4. First, at age 6, I started playing the trikitixa -- and I keep playing -- but then I also started learning the guitar, the piano and the song ... To enter Musikene, I had to specialize: I chose the jazz modality and, within it, I studied singing.

Did you enter four years old learning music or have your parents introduce you?

A little bit of the two. The mother thought that music education is very important for young children, that it helps to develop the mind, to become aware of other perspectives. I thought music also serves many other aspects of life. My father has always liked music, and he agreed that I would start studying music, and so I started, at four years old, in a small music school. Then, when I was five years old, I started at Galdakao music school.

Trikitixa, first.

I started at age 6. I play the sound, I play the pandero, and of course I sang. When I was 11, I started writing pieces of trikitixa with a letter, and I also recorded a mockup at a friend's house. The music and the words were mine in that model. I put in those pieces what I saw, thought and felt: about nature, about the Basque Country… in those songs I spoke. There were also instrumental pieces. I also made a racing music and it spread to several schools.

Who did you look at when you invented those songs?

When I was little, I heard Pirritx and Porrotx, but also Benito Lertxundi. I mean, the ones you hear here, the typical ones. When I got older, when I was 13, I started watching Disney Channel on TV, and there I saw Hanna Montana. He also made a film about him, and my uncles gave me his album. There were a number of country singers, I really liked them, and that led me to hear more country. Anyway, at home, I've always heard The Coors, Irish music, and the traditional song, and that's what I related to the country. In that sense, I began to delve deeper into the country.

How do you make trikitixa guitar or piano before the song?

The teachers at the time asked me if I wanted to enter the Middle School of Music in Bilbao, and I did, but there they did not teach the trikitixa. So I started studying flute travesera, and I stayed for a year. Then I left that and I started singing and playing. I started studying classical singing with the intention of entering the conservatory, and I walked in, but then I only stayed for two months, because I didn't like it. I don't know what I would say now. Because I didn't know if I would enter the music conservatory or not, I started studying piano and singing with piano. I entered the conservatory and started the lyrical song, but also the classical song -- opera and others -- I didn't like it: it lasted two months. So, even in Bilbao, I went to an academy. The professor there had studied at Musikene and told me about Musikene's chance.

He guided you...

But I didn't think it came in. “I just started at Bilbao’s mid-grade school and I’ve quit. How am I going to enter Musikene?” “I can prepare you in a year, try it!” the professor told me. And that year, she finished high school, she did the entrance test, and she went in. To Musikene! Now I'm doing the second year.

You did not hesitate: I wanted to learn music.

I've always known that I wanted to learn music, but I saw it difficult. Musikene's breakthrough seemed like a great thing to me. I also had many doubts when it came to choosing the Baccalaureate, although in the end I did the Baccalaureate, which works music, dance and performing arts. I thought, “If I cannot enter Musikene, I can learn Anthropology, Sociology or Philosophy.” Now that I entered Musikene, go!

Singing, therefore, not “student singers”.

And how many singers are there in Musikene who are not learning? Whoever wants to study Engineering has a number of subjects that will serve him to study Engineering, from Elementary to University. But how many subjects do you need to help you learn music in compulsory education? The school doesn't offer anything to learn music, you have to try it outside of school. The question is how much you want to learn. If you've come to the University with the intention of studying Music, it means that until then you've worked music. Music is an art, like painting is art, you start to learn from a young age, out of compulsory teaching.

What does Musikene teach who wants to be a singer? What is lost by the singer acting without Musikene?

Good question. Musikene is an institution that offers a higher degree, there is no higher if they are not masters. I, for example, am studying jazz, and my studies here show me many aspects of jazz, of which I will take what I want, which interest me. They're the ones I can use in my music. Other things I will know that they are there, but for the moment I do not take them for me. For example, I like Arrangement, Harmony, Singing, and through them, I'm learning to do another musical style and improvise. Otherwise, the singer could learn to sing in an academy, it doesn't have to come to Musikene to learn to sing.

You do not need to conduct university studies.

No. I mean, here I am learning many things, I will learn many things, but when I finish, when I get the title, I will continue learning many things, on the street, knowing people, playing with other musicians, learning with other professors… Here, it is true, I will delve into the studies and get the title.

What would you like to do after these studies have been completed?

Keep doing my project, get into my project what I learned here and grow up as a musician, making better songs, discovering more things in music.

Continue the road started at The Beginning and The Road?

I also hear other music, but I haven't always had to make a country. Well, in The Road, it's not all country, I wish it were, but I also have influences from other music.

Study music, create music, play music… and teach.

It's obvious that musicians are going to have to teach in our lives. If we want to eat we will have to give classes, enter an orchestra, play at weddings… and keep doing our music!

What does it take to make, play and sing your own music?

Enthusiasm. And the inspiration and the desire to say something. I write the letters of my songs, because I have to drive out what I feel. On the other hand, I want to transmit through my music the feelings that come to me through music. It's a chain. If you want to make songs more and more elaborate. You need not lose the desire to learn, because if you don't get into monotony. In any case, if we want to study, we don't have to go to music school, we have to listen to music, we have to try new paths.

Why do you make songs in English?

Because I want. They always ask me the same question, but they don't realize that I also make songs in Basque. When I make a song in English, I do it because I want it, and it's, there's no more. Most of the music I hear is in English, and if I want to make country, tradition is in English, because I do it in English. In the Basque Country, what is most appreciated is speaking in Euskera in the music industry, or speaking against the government, although it is common knowledge that music is worth nothing. I sing in English, but my words are also demands, I sing government, machismo and other things, but you have to read the words.

Read, you mean, the lyrics of your songs.

Yes. We're always on it. “If you want to sing here you have to do it in Basque,” when they say, “Why?” We always walk the same way. I want to make music, music comes with words, words don't go on one side and music on the other, you have to value both. And everyone can sing whatever they want, in whatever language they want.

We've read you the song Buzz on the album The Road, you've been bullied at school. The appearance of the experience has led you to participate in different forums.

When I did the song, I didn't think about what would come next. I did it because I needed it, like so many other songs. I still have some songs saved, because I don't think they're very good, for example. I made a bullying song, put it on youtube, and soon they came to ask, the requests and the calls for participation.

You have something to say about the work that is done, that is not done, against bullying in schools.

If while we are in the institute and cannot leave it in school hours, we are in charge of the teachers, they are the ones who have the responsibility. Teachers don't have to educate the students, it's a job you have to do at home, but for those who don't bring that home education, when the time comes, someone will have to tell them something. And if the moment occurs in school, the teacher or teacher will tell you. If you don't study at school, you'll learn on the street, and that'll be worse.

You say that there is nothing being done about bullying, in schools and in schools in general.

In general. Some people deny it to me, but in my institute it was like this, and it's not the only case I know. In most cases I know nothing has been done. “It’s not true,” some say, and mine is not absolute truth, but I think I have more of the truth than they do. They call me to speak, and I can go and say what I think, but that doesn't mean, though, that I have that absolute truth. Everyone has experienced bullying in their own way, everyone has their experience: I mine. Each case is different, but they have great similarities.

What's more powerful, the speech, or the speech that turns into a song, Boiling?

The two have strength, where you say, how and to whom. Communication is easier for those who listen to the song, for example, if they're actually listening to it. But if the listener is in the tavern and listens to the song there, far away and without more, there is no communication. Anyway, I think that the song makes it easier to transmit the message. As in the movies, in the most special moments there is always music, because it facilitates the transmission of feeling.