They are already 11 and 15 years old, but they became popular on social networks when Nora was barely 8 and Isaac 11. A video recorded in the gardens of their house, in Quimper, Brittany, went around the world. It is in Youtube. Since July 2019, it has accumulated more than 7 million views.
“We didn’t understand what happened,” says Nicolás Restoin, Nora and Isaac’s father, “we had to leave the phones in the basement because they wouldn’t stop ringing with messages.”
I check the video again: Nora laughs and with her the pact will be sealed. Isaac, smiling, waits for the moment to do the second voice or to play the trumpet. Nicolás played the first chords on the guitar without flinching: What does it matter to you that I love you, if you don’t love me anymore… Everything was recorded by Catherine, the mother, who never shows her face. “She had a secondhand iPhone 6,” she says.
Nora made “Twenty Years” by María Teresa Vera and Guillermina Aramburu her own with such fascinating innocence that it captivated the public, especially the Cuban and Latin American ones. She had previously learned “Lágrimas negras” by Miguel Matamoros. It was actually the first song in Spanish memorized by the girl. She tells Catherine that Nora can learn a song in no time.
Everyone in the family learned the language, first through the songs. Since then, the followers have been increasing. They had their first tour last year, through Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile. They also appeared in Madrid.
Between 2019 and 2020 they recorded their first album: isaac and nora. Latin & Love Studies. In December they presented a video with the first original song. “We didn’t compose it ourselves, because we still don’t know how to make songs.” The subject corresponds to the Spanish Diego Galaz (Feten Feten) and the Argentine Sebastián Schon (soda Stereo). They also recorded a four-part documentary miniseries.
Music has brought them back to Latin America. Now they are in Santiago de Chile. They will offer a concert on March 2. They will return to Argentina for their first recital in Buenos Aires, where we talked on February 23. It was 6 o’clock in the afternoon. Thursday.
About 5 meters away we have the monument donated by France in 1910. On the marble steps of the base are the singer Catalina García and the guitarist Santiago Preti, from the Colombian group Monsier Periné. They won a Latin Grammy in 2015 with their second album, Music Box. They are very popular, even if they only have a small group of followers in front of them.
After a few songs, Catalina invites Nora and her family to come over to do one of the most well-known songs by the Colombian group: “Nuestra canción”. They recorded it together with Vicente García. When she reciprocates with Nora, her voice is so soft that she can barely be heard. They sing a cappella. “Nora doesn’t have a voice technique,” her father tells me. The public, seated on the asphalt around the monument, applauds with pleasure.
Catalina, along with Natalia Lafourcade and Mon Laferté, is one of the singers Nora admires, according to what I was told at the end, when she, along with her family, agreed to send a message to the readers of OnCuba.
We are talking about some interpreters with whom they have interacted, such as Lila Downs or Rozalén. They hope to meet others, such as Omara Portuondo, whom they have as a reference due to her relationship with her admired Buena Vista Social Club.
“But for me Natalia Lafourcade is today the voice of Latin America,” says Isaac. He also believes that Cuba is the mecca of the trumpet and that is why he is excited about a trip to Havana. In addition to this instrument, she practices drums and other percussion, bass and electric guitar. “I get up at 8:30 and study trumpet”, he tells me.
A Colombian girl stops by to greet them after the show. Santiago and Catalina have also finished their presentation, which coincides with the singer’s birthday. The girl asks how to follow them on social networks and if they show up in Buenos Aires. She then asks them to take a picture and they take one selfies.
“There are people who tell us that we have originality. What we do is always drawn from simplicity. We are not virtuous”, points out Nicolás.
Perhaps this “musical adventure” is not exactly consolidated as a career, although they have all the conditions for it to be. For Nora, it is a “hobby” that at times makes her imagine futures, but which is marked by a full present as well as school obligations. Nicolás and Catherine try to organize their children’s routine in many ways.
Nicolás believes that traveling is as educational as going to school, but they have determined that they spend the next year at school, receiving classes in person, and not as in the last two courses, remotely, through the virtuality to which we arrived pushed by the coronavirus pandemic and its confinement.
Somehow his triumph has been possible thanks to technology and the use we gave it in times of isolation. “We are a product of the Internet,” says Nicolás; who, although he makes ukuleles, does not consider himself a luthier. “I’m just an amateur.”
The family has learned Spanish thanks to YouTube and certain applications like Duolingo. Despite the use they have given to technology, they are determined by their relationship and fidelity with sounds and classic themes from the musical repertoire, especially from this region of the world with which they maintain a close relationship.
“The modernity of the Internet can help to rescue things from before,” says Nicolás. “Children can learn from these regions.” They have recorded songs by Violeta Parra, Demetrio Ortiz, Chavela Vargas. Also from Stevie Wonder and Leonard Cohen. Julio Jaramillo is Catherine’s favorite author. The warmth of the people of this land keeps them in constant excitement.
We continue in Plaza Francia, in front of the National Museum of Fine Arts, which can be seen from our position, although we would have to cross Avenida del Libertador to reach it. Nicolás tells me that they might find Lafourcade very soon in Madrid, that if it happens it would be time to meet her in person. They already launched one of the songs into their networks: “Hasta la raíz”.
From Argentina they will continue to Montevideo and several cities in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico. They will even reach the United States and Cuba, although the presentations on the island are not completely successful. “Our managers are in contact to play in Cuba, for free, in exchange for authorizations to record on the street, in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.”
“Children know how to do professional things, but they are not. They are music students. We have to learn a little more about music. They need to understand how it works to make their own songs. Until now we are only interpreters”.
I accompany the family to the area of cafes and breweries around the Recoleta cemetery, since we are very close. On the way, Nora remembers Freddo’s chocolate cake and she tells me about some Korean bands that she likes to listen to. The rest of the family converses in French as he walks calmly.
In the few weeks they have been in Buenos Aires they have walked nonstop. They have talked to all kinds of people and have learned from the musicians or people who, like me, met them after they made “Veinte años” their own.
Buenos Aires seems to them a wonderful city, despite its convulsions, even a place where they could live. Because of the culture, the warmth of the people, the way in which their arms have been opened, as in all of Latin America.
