Rui Vargas

Aaron Gonsher

The person sitting next to me on the couch today is someone... The rare person who is actually deserving of the title of local legend, when it comes to contributions to a specific scene. He’s been DJing for more than 30 years now. Please join me in welcoming Rui Vargas. [applause]

So, 30 years is a very long time to be DJing. But to go back even before that first year that you were DJing in front of a crowd, when did you first become aware of DJing as a concept? Of someone standing in front of the audience and mixing together records for the enjoyment of other people?

Rui Vargas

I didn’t have any notion of what a DJ was until actually I was DJing almost. I didn’t have a goal or a dream to become a DJ. I spent my youth listening to music. Lisbon in the ’70s, Portugal in the ’70s was a monochromatic society, gray, trying to recover from 50 years of dictatorship and 50 years of censorship. We were educated by our parents, by our grandparents, not to get away from the norm, not to deviate from the mainstream. Be humble, be quiet, don’t make any fuss. So that’s more or less what I did.

I was very shy. Still am. I was a very shy boy, a few friends. What I did was coming from school, starting to listen to the radio. I was 12 or 13. By then there was Rádio Comercial, a national radio, it was a very important radio and with great shows. All across the board, you could listen in lunch time. Imagine at lunch time you could listen to a program called Discoteca, which was funk, disco and black music overall. And then Rock and Stock, more popular alternative pop. And at night I stopped everything to listen to Som Da Frente, alternative rock, indie radio show that conquered and educated several generations, I believe, of Portuguese people. Made by António Sérgio. He was a major key in my education, I can say that, in my musical upbringing.

Everything he would say, it was like God speaking to me directly. That was more or less the important and the importance he transmitted, speaking on a microphone on the radio. And radio always had these magic sides to it. Like, a guy somewhere in the middle of Lisbon, Portugal, I don’t know where, speaking to a microphone, and I’m here listening to it through the air. It still is magic for me every time I think about it.

But I started a relationship with radio, with António Sérgio in particular, and listening to everybody and cultivating myself by myself.

Aaron Gonsher

What was he saying specifically that spoke to you?

Rui Vargas

First, the wide array of music he showed us, always in high levels of risk. Quality. He was thinking out of the box. He’s considered the Portuguese John Peel. I don’t know. Maybe I prefer António Sérgio to him, because he has this strong, dark... not dark, but low voice, bass voice. Every time he was up on the mic, you would feel like, “Woo.”

And he showed me the last punk records, the new age, the post-punk, the first electronic records that I’ve heard. One of them, we could listen to it, because it’s from that era. And also listening to António Sérgio and listening to radio on a constant basis, on a daily basis, it’s also developed my interests and my relationship with the night itself. Because in the night you can listen to all details in the music. You don’t have noise. The radio shows were broadcasted at around midnight, from midnight to two. And I’m talking about Som Da Frente and Rolls Rock before that. At night everything makes more impact and more sense, and that’s also one of the reasons, I believe, I started to live at night and more at night than on a daytime.

Aaron Gonsher

You were preparing to be a DJ 10 years before you actually became one.

Rui Vargas

I believe so. Basically I never... And going back to your question, never thought on being a DJ. I didn’t know even what a DJ was by then. But I had this hidden secret will to be a radio presenter. But since I was such a shy guy and with some awkward social behaviors, wasn’t feeling fit in any groups that I knew at school. I developed this imaginary world with music. And until I found a guy. It was in ’84. I remember because we had the same passion with these bands, and he lent a record by Echo & the Bunnymen on ’84. Porcupine, ’83 or ’84. So, I met Zé Pedro Moura, who had a big musical-driven gang. They had bands. They were listening constantly to music together every day, every night. I finally found, “OK, I belong somewhere, and now they are my mates.”

I started to hang out with them, and by accident he started also DJing in Frágil, and I started to bring some records and play some records with him. Actually, it was a matter of instead of showing my records to my friends, which I don’t conceive to collect records or buy records to be on a shelf at home. I have to share my records with someone, my family or my friends or someone. Suddenly my friends were not enough, and I started to take my records to a brother audience or a brother circle of friends, and that was the Frágil days maybe, in ’87, ’88.

Aaron Gonsher

I think we’re gonna talk a lot about Frágil, but for now thinking about you being in that role of sitting around midnight to two in the morning, I wanna play something that might trigger some memories for you of that time, and maybe we can talk about that afterwards.

Rui Vargas

Shoot.

(music: Laurie Anderson – “O Superman”)

Now, imagine hearing this for the first time in ’81.

Aaron Gonsher

What was that?

Rui Vargas

This is Laurie Anderson. At the time, she was only an avant-garde artist doing performances in New York. It’s one of her first records. It’s a prayer to gods called “O Superman,” and listening to this you could almost realize and believe that Superman existed and God existed and they’re in other planets whatsoever, because it was so far, so alien, this music when you heard it for the first time in the airwaves listening to radio.

Aaron Gonsher

Do you mean not just something like “O Superman” but something with that sort of electronic mood and sound?

Rui Vargas

The sound. Yeah, the sound. The sound. Everything made sense because everything is mysterious. Actually, vocoder – which is the kind of instrument that is used here to change the voice – is something that came from the spies to disguise their voices. Spy technology, it’s not musical/technical. Music appropriated the technology to do instruments. It was the first time I heard vocoder. And listening to this for the first time, like I said, was just a kick in the head and opened a whole new world of sound and possibilities for me.

Aaron Gonsher

You’ve listened to Laurie Anderson. You mentioned Echo & the Bunnymen. How many of these bands that you were listening to, or music in general, did it seem like was coming from outside of Portugal? Or was there still this hangover that you’re describing from the revolution?

Rui Vargas

Can you repeat that please?

Aaron Gonsher

Yeah. How much of the music that you were responding to at this time was Portuguese music?

Rui Vargas

Not a lot. Not a lot, to be fair. There was some bands like ’81, ’82. Heróis do Mar, maybe they had the first album. Carlos Maria Trindade was here yesterday, one of the members of the band. I wasn’t really too interested. The Xutos & Pontapés, of course, they had already one or two singles, but I wasn’t really deep into Portuguese music by that time.

Aaron Gonsher

When you started DJing, how much of what you were DJing was what would now be considered house music? Or things that were not like Echo & the Bunnymen or Laurie Anderson but...

Rui Vargas

When I started DJing like back in ’88, there wasn’t like house night or techno night or whatever night. There was music that people could dance to, and you could easily go from the Clash to B-52’s to a dub record to one of the first hip-hop records to Grandmaster Flash or Sugarhill Gang or the first house records coming from Chicago or from Detroit, and it wasn’t strange. Of course, changing BPMs from... I wasn’t really a technical DJ. I was just playing records and following the groove, or trying to. But there wasn’t these barriers where you should be confined when playing music, when playing records.

Aaron Gonsher

Did you have a specialty at that point? Did you have the one track that you always knew you could reach to when something might be going wrong on the dancefloor, or that you wanted to surprise people with?

Rui Vargas

I always loved to play B-52’s, the first album by B-52’s or the dub “Magnificent Seven” by Clash or Linton Kwesi Johnson. Or Marshall Jefferson, one of my favorites. It’s also there in your laptop.

Aaron Gonsher

Just to go back a bit, you said 1988 was when you started DJing in front of an audience. Where was that, and how did you actually get that gig?

Rui Vargas

Like I said, it’s Zé Pedro, my friend, who still is a resident in Lux. He got this job DJing in Frágil, in old Frágil. I started to come with him and then bring some records with him and play with him, but I wasn’t invited to play there. By then, normally the clubs, they had their own records. The records mostly were not carried by the DJs. The records were there, and the resident DJ would pick up the songs and the records to play and did a set with the house records.

Aaron Gonsher

Had you been much of a club-goer up to that point in places other than Frágil? What was the scene in Lisbon at the time, in terms of what might have been offering things you were actually interested in from a musical perspective?

Rui Vargas

The only place for me to go out was the neighborhood Bairro Alto. It was where the places and the kind of music I was interested in at the moment were being played. Places like Frágil, of course, which was more of black music, disco, funk, boogie kind of thing. And then Café Concerto. Or, Sud Ouest. I also was a resident in this place near Frágil called Sud Ouest. I was a resident there for six months in ’88 also. And they were playing new beats, with house, with the alternative rock, and that was the scene at the moment.

Aaron Gonsher

What distinguished Frágil, then? What made it special?

Rui Vargas

Everything. First, the idea of going into Frágil was already something that puts you alert and willing to party. Because you never know if you get in the club. I was denied maybe six times before getting inside. And I got inside because of Zé Pedro, because he was working there. It was like, “Am I going to get in or am I not?”

Inside, it was like a whole new world, like a shelter for all sorts of people that were thinking out of the box and thinking differently. Creative people, people from arts, whatsoever, from cinema, from newspapers, from theater. And there you could feel safe, and you could be different, and you could speak different things and be yourself without any judgment. Like I said, it was a very conservative society still. I started to go to Frágil maybe in ’86 or something, but it was like a magnet to interesting and nice people and people that were feeling they belonged somewhere in Frágil. People that were strayed around the city, and they found somewhere where they could be themselves without judgment, whatsoever. Freedom.

Aaron Gonsher

I assume that you’re including yourself in that group, in the sense of being a shy person who went to Frágil and suddenly felt like there was this world here that...

Rui Vargas

Absolutely. I was already doing radio by then also, professionally. My radio show would end at two o’clock, and every day – every day – I would go from the radio to Frágil without any... I wouldn’t say to anyone that I was going. I was just going. Because I knew that it’s going to be a good night, I will meet interesting people, or my friends will be there. And I would go out every single night from two to four.

Aaron Gonsher

When had you started working radio professionally then? In 1986, when you started going to Frágil you’d already been doing radio professionally.

Rui Vargas

Frágil in ’88. Radio professionally in the same year, exactly. I started first in the university radio, pirate radio, first as a technical assistant doing microphone levels and putting commercials, which were broadcasted in cassettes, played, stopped, paused and rewind with a pencil. You had to queue it with a pencil. Then they invited me to participate in one of their shows, and I started to have a show there. Then I started doing professional radio, where I had this slot, first from two to seven at night, one week on, one week off. Then from midnight to two, and that was when I started also to go a lot to Frágil.

Aaron Gonsher

What did pirate radio mean in Portugal at that time? Because pirate radio is this loose term for illegal radio but I assume that there are more nuances to that.

Rui Vargas

For small periods of time, and I don’t recall why, the frequencies were open, so everybody could broadcast without the police coming and take your material. There were like an explosion of little radios everywhere in the neighborhood and all across the country, until I believe in ’90, there was a contest to choose for radios in Lisbon and for radios in Porto, to limit the...

But going to your question, it meant freedom. It meant freedom without any commercial concerns. You could play whatever you want to and be obnoxious sometimes and do some crazy programs that made no sense nowadays maybe.

Aaron Gonsher

Was it difficult at all for you to get your hand on the music that you wanted to play at that point? If we’re talking ’88, ’89...

Rui Vargas

Absolutely.

Aaron Gonsher

This is when house was sort of blowing up internationally.

Rui Vargas

But even before that it was very difficult to get to the records, because that’s why radio made such an important role by then. The record labels in Portugal worked very poorly. They released few records, with bad pressings most of the time, and most of the good music wasn’t released in Portugal. When it was released, it was like months later. It was pre-Internet. We didn’t have internet then, so every time a family or a friend traveled to London or to Paris we would ask, “Can you bring me, can you go to HMV and bring me some records?”

There were two record shops importing, or two or three record shops importing by then records, but they were very expensive for young teenagers like myself.

Aaron Gonsher

And you weren’t getting records for free just because you were at the radio, because it was a pirate station at that point.

Rui Vargas

Yeah, by then there wasn’t that chance. Only like that when I got professionalized. But in the ’80s there was a very important, I would say two record shops for the scene. One directly linked to the Bairro Alto scene and the underground and more alternative scene which was called Controverse, which was like a pole of, again, a magnet for music lovers. The guy who run the shop, he was a very, very astute guy. He would import from industrial Belgium or EBM to Alexander O’Neal soul, e-pop, techno, house. But very impeccable chosen.

I would spend – everybody would spend – afternoons there, talking with each other and exchanging notes and information. Because information was scarce by then. We had newspapers, Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Billboard, and a few other, not so many other magazines or newspapers imported, again. The major way to pass around information was speaking with your mates, with your friends and with your music-lover friends.

Aaron Gonsher

At this point, you had no aspirations to actually make music. You were solely focused on, “I wanna buy records, I wanna play records for people.”

Rui Vargas

Absolutely. I think I never had that trigger, “I can do this or I think I’m prepared to do music.” I never felt I was prepared. I always thought of it as, it’s okay. I don’t feel pressure to be a producer or to make music like nowadays. In my generation there are a lot of guys that, it’s normal. My profession is to pick the best records I can find and play them. It’s not to pretend I’m a good producer or to pretend I make good music, because 90% of people that think like that, they are wrong.

From one side it’s great. Everybody is willing to have a go and do it yourself. It’s the punk motto, and it’s a motto that I defend every time. At the same time it’s hard to find a good record nowadays, a record that really is striking, new, fresh. You listen to a lot of the same beats, the same samples over and over until you find a good record. Maybe that’s why there’s so much going on now at the moment with old records and going back to digging and finding jams that weren’t discovered before. The production, there are amazing people doing music still, of course.

I think I never did music because of respect of the musicians. I wasn’t feeling prepared to compete and to be up there with them.

Aaron Gonsher

Let’s play another song that, even if it’s not a new one, I think at a certain point in time it probably represented something shockingly new.

Rui Vargas

Absolutely.

(music: Jungle Wonz – “The Jungle”)

This was maybe the first house record I’ve heard.

Aaron Gonsher

What record was that?

Rui Vargas

This is Marshall Jefferson, and the project he has like Jungle Wonz, and the song is called “The Jungle.” It was ’88 maybe when I’ve heard this for the first time, and it was from a tape from a radio show by Jazzie B. He was then one of the first DJs in the KISS FM in London, and he was also the mentor from Soul II Soul, a band quite popular then. In the middle of funk, soul, and more low-beat songs he played in the show, he played this track. I went also bananas with it, and I just wanted to know what it was and have this record and hear it loud on the dancefloor. I think maybe it’s one of the first records that wanted me to go to a dancefloor with my eyes closed. It’s kind of a trademark of the sound I like and I still play.

Aaron Gonsher

What do you mean by that?

Rui Vargas

Organic, electronic, at the same time. Deep, melodic, mysterious, moody. It’s my cup of tea. My kind of thing, I guess. From then on I started. I went to another record shop, which was called B-Motor, specially focused on dance music, that record shop – also quite important for the scene then. I started buying records, every Trax record, every Chicago record that I could find.

Aaron Gonsher

How did the Lisbon crowd respond when you were playing these records? Because the story of house jumping to the UK is that a song like “Strings of Life” cleared the floor one week and then a month later, that’s only when it became a hit. But people were too confused by it at first. It was so against what they wanted out of the music at that point.

Rui Vargas

I remember clearing the floor also with some of my first house choices. But like I said, they were mixed with other, more familiar kind of sounds. So it was like a moment, like, “OK, let’s do this, let’s clear the floor.” We would play it, and of course but it wasn’t that hard, amazingly. I think people got it, not instantly, but it was quite a quick reaction, and soon after there were nights more focused on house in bigger clubs in Lisbon like Kremlin or Alcantara-Mar, but with a harder sound, with a harder and faster sound, more European than American.

Aaron Gonsher

More European, but still not Portuguese?

Rui Vargas

That came a little bit later. Of course, everybody in the room knows the phenomenon that was “So Get Up” by the Underground Sound of Lisbon. Thanks mainly to of course to those two guys, but also to António Cunha, which was the label owner or the label master. And he always tried to push our music, the Portuguese music to other territories across our physical frontiers. Because of the phenomenal world success of USL, a lot of producers emerged, and they were also embraced not only by Kaos, this label, but also by a very important guy in the history of that Portuguese scene which is an American guy called Rob Di Stefano, who ran Tribal America in the ’90s, which was one of the best and most important house music labels in the ’90s. With Deep Dish, Danny Tenaglia, Club 69, a lot of fresh new producers that started in that label. Like I said, after the undergrounds under Lisbon, Urban Dreams, Orzone, Cult of Crimeria, Louis Light, they all get their, they all rode the wave, the Portuguese wave, and people outside of Portugal paid attention.

Aaron Gonsher

We’re talking about the mid-’90s at this point?

Rui Vargas

The mid-’90s, yeah.

Aaron Gonsher

When did that wave crash, and what happened in Lisbon after that? There was so much international attention on the scene at this certain point, and it didn’t sustain, at least not the same musically.

Rui Vargas

It is weird, actually. I don’t have an explanation for that, but it faded away. It slowly faded away. When we thought, OK, we have the international media attention... They were calling Portugal the new Ibiza or the “Paradise Called Portugal,” underground house music from “Paradise Called Portugal.” Big raves started to happen in castles and in huge warehouses with thousands of people. We created the momentum, the big momentum. Everything was growing and everybody was having a party, really, and things started to fade away because there were divisions in the scene. There were parties that were a rip-off. There were problems eventually. I think the production didn’t cope also with the momentum that created. Somehow only Underground Sound of Lisbon and a few others continued a few more years to produce records and hit records, but things started to fade away a few years after.

Aaron Gonsher

But then at the end of the ’90s, a club opened?

Rui Vargas

Yeah.

Aaron Gonsher

That went on to define the next two decades of your life.

Rui Vargas

At least for me, of course.

Aaron Gonsher

Probably people in this room know what I’m talking about. But for the sake of the lecture, what am I referring to and how did this come about, and more importantly, who was behind it?

Rui Vargas

OK, the same team, obviously Manuel Reis, the owner of Frágil and the people around him, we were thinking that Frágil was already, not only Frágil but the whole neighborhood was fading, and Frágil was limited for what we wanted to do. So we started to look for options and places to move to, and to expand our horizons and to change again another part of the city. And that was Manuel’s fault again. He dramatically changed the life in Bairro Alto, which was before a neighborhood with hookers, journalists in cellars. Journalists, because there were actually newspapers working in the neighborhood, not because the journalists were chasing the hookers. But yeah, it was like that. It was a shady neighborhood. Nobody would go there until they opened a restaurant, and two years later Frágil opened in ’82 and the whole scene started to emerge. The same will was put in action in another area of Lisbon that was forgotten, middle of the, halfway from the center to the new Lisbon that was inaugurated that year at the Expo, Expo ’98. So it was a no man’s land. And we took over a warehouse that were... I went there in ‘97 for the first time and they were repairing engines for ships, and it was like a building to support machinery from boats and stuff, crumbling apart the building almost. And it was our dream that came through.

Aaron Gonsher

How much of a role did Manuel [Reis] have it shaping the musical vision of Lux?

Rui Vargas

Yeah, I think the best answer to that is he trusted people. And he gave chance to people. Because musically, he never hardly gave opinions about music. But he trusted the people he was working with. And it was always like that.

But apart from the music, he took care of everything, from the aesthetics, the people, the collaborators, the artists he invited to do chair, or a new decoration for the Lux, the colors of the stairs, the colors of everything. He spend the whole day there. Every morning around 11, he would be there and he would leave at eight o’clock, for 19 years. He would be there at night. He was completely obsessed, in a good way, with Lux.

Aaron Gonsher

And are there other lessons that you’ve taken from that relationship, other than the obsession?

Rui Vargas

Of course, the generosity of opening the doors, his doors, to other people to show their work. He was always a person who wanted to give space and the stage for all sorts of musical artists, visual artists in Lisbon and across Portugal, I believe. And of course, music-wise, people from abroad, also. But he wanted more than everything to... He saw Lux not as a club, not as a nightclub, a place where people go to dance and have a few drinks, but as a work of art overall, from the door, from the behavior of the people who are working. We are very, very, very tight with each other. We are restless. We are never happy with what we got. We want to be and to make things always new, in a new way and in a better way. And that was what he taught us.

Aaron Gonsher

How important do you think that sense of community is to the fact that Lux has existed for 20 years? That there is a group of people who are willing to put in all of their energy into something that they truly believe in, separate from treating it just as a commercial concern?

Rui Vargas

I think you answered the question. The core of Lux, they work together at least 20 years, because some of them, they come from Frágil. And for instance, the team of residents, there isn’t one that left Lux since the beginning and we started with seven residents – the whole seven are there. There are like two or three more. But no one left. And every time someone left was heartbroken. It was very, very rare to see in 20 years someone leaving with a smile or with a grin.

Aaron Gonsher

And how do you think your own artistry as a DJ has evolved over those 20 years, in response to the people that you have around you? First of all, all these other residents, but also all the shifts that have occurred musically, or in the city even?

Rui Vargas

Being a resident in Lux and throughout... I play in Lux for 20 years, like I said. I play every week. For 18 years, I played every week except for weeks of holidays. So that makes a thousand times I played in Lux, maybe. So it’s difficult to talk about Rui Vargas as a DJ and not talk about Lux, because I grew up there. That’s where I learned my work and my thing. But it’s a constant challenge to play week after week after week, because your audience keeps on revolving, keeps on changing. And even with the same audience, moods are different from one day to other. It’s a constant challenge and non-ending challenge. And I go, I swear, I go every single night that I have a whole night set, in Lux, playing six hours and I go there like the first time because it’s my favorite night of the month, every time I have six hours in a club. Six or seven. And doing painting with my records, or trying to.

Aaron Gonsher

Is that your preferred metaphor of choice these days? Painting with records? Or is there some other way that you would describe what you’re trying to do over those six hours?

Rui Vargas

I have a few more metaphors, but painting is one of them. But communicating is another one. Expressing my... Maybe it’s even when I was young, maybe it was easier for me to express my feelings to a girl through a mixtape than through a letter.

Aaron Gonsher

Classic.

Rui Vargas

Or talking directly. I always express myself through music, through other peoples’ music. I learned to do that. So that’s one way of seeing things. I’m trying to express myself through other people’s music. But I’m creating like a big canvas where colors are substitute by records. Instead of colors, I use records and I paint a huge mosaic every night I have in Lux for six hours, and I try to make a nice overall object, instead of a messy one. Sometimes it happens it could be like messy, because it’s a live performance. It’s not something I work at it at home or prepare things. 90% of what I do, it’s from improvisation, so sometimes I mess up, sometimes it’s beautiful. It is like this.

Aaron Gonsher

I wanna play another song that you had actually chosen. It’s representative of your time at Lux in some way.

Rui Vargas

OK, sure.

(music: Moodymann – “I Can’t Kick This Feeling When It Hits”)

The simplicity of this record blew me away every time I hear it. And the power and the hugeness, the dimension of this record, only made with two or three samples.

Aaron Gonsher

That was Moodymann, “I Can’t Kick This Feeling When It Hits.” And I think a record like that, I agree with you about the simplicity. And it’s also timeless in a way. It’s transcending all these periods. And I was curious, what makes a record timeless to you? As someone who has heard so many, mixed with so many over the course of your career, what makes a record timeless, in your ears?

Rui Vargas

That’s a tough one. First, it has to be honest. You can’t do a timeless record with tricks, gimmicks or the new thing. It has to be honest, it has to be true. That’s a tough one. Basically, it has to touch people’s hearts somehow. And I think that’s a tricky one. Only a few people can rate themselves of doing that. I don’t know. That was a tough question. But honestly, it’s the bottom line for me.

As a DJ as well, I don’t really care of people playing too neat, too perfect, too one sort of sound, one sort of music. And you go back to your house and you don’t remember one record, one trick, one song, one line. What I do care is to close my eyes, get into a club and know for sure that this can only be this guy. Even if he’s messing up, taking risks. But honestly, above all, don’t play a record you don’t like. Never.

Aaron Gonsher

And as long as you’re not playing records you don’t like, you’re gonna continue doing this for another 30 years, do you think?

Rui Vargas

Just as long as people have air.

Aaron Gonsher

I’m sure they will be. Thank you for joining us today. [applause]

Rui Vargas

Thank you.

Aaron Gonsher

We’re gonna open it up to questions. There’s some microphones on either side. So if you just raise your hand, people will be able to run right over quickly and give you a microphone. Someone right in the middle. It’ll take a while to pass down.

Audience Member

Hi, thank you very much. That was a really touching story that you told us.

Rui Vargas

[responds in Portuguese]

Audience Member

Yeah. So with all the knowledge and experience that you have, that you’ve been through your life, everything that you did, when you see this young generations approaching, creative minds approaching new issues, trying to break through, trying to create something new, do you have any piece of advice to those young generations which are trying to do their things as well? What tips would you give those young people today?

Rui Vargas

It’s a bit vague, but you have to believe in yourself and you have to believe that you can do different. And one thing that struck me, again going to the beginning of the conversation, about this radio show that I was listening to every night, the slogan was “O direito de diference,” which means “The right to do different. The right to be different.” First, I engraved that, because be different was cool, certainly, after 50 long years of censorship. And always trying to be different, I think, was also Manuel’s motto, in Lux, that he passed to us. Always try to be creative, be different, do things our own way. And sometimes dismantling the rules, the norm, and twisting it and believing in yourself. That’s what I would say.

Audience Member

Is it something that you still try to apply to yourself as well?

Rui Vargas

Every day. And I try to believe in myself. Sometimes it’s not easy because, of course, playing in a club every week for 20 years, sometimes you don’t really feel empathetic with the music, with the trends, with the music that is trendy in that period. Sometimes you struggle, sometimes you shake. But if you believe you have what it gets – or what it takes, sorry – if you believe you have what it takes, you go through the storm and there’s calmer seas after.

Audience Member

Thank you very much.

Rui Vargas

Thank you.

Aaron Gonsher

Were there any other questions? Alright, then, thank you again. [applause]