“I would love to perform the adaptation in El Molinón and Miramar,” says the Gozoniego musician, who has gone viral
A lazy Sunday afternoon, a bagpipe, a mobile and the song of summer. Those were the ingredients of the formula for the smash hit that the version of “Stay” by Quevedo and BZRP made by the gozoniego Daniel Meré. The adaptation already exceeds 100,000 views on social networks and has launched this musician to “tiktok stardom”, who is already being shouted through the streets of Luanco that he is the “world’s most famous piper”. “I am very happy that he has served to promote the instrument,” says Meré, who now dreams of singing the “Whats up” to the public of El Molinón and Miramar to the sound of his bagpipes.
As Meré himself explains, it all started when some friends sent him a viral video in which a saxophonist stood up Benito Villamarín, the Betis stadium, with a version of “Stay”. “I thought that with the bagpipes it could be good, so I got down to it,” says the musician, a native of Bañugues, who in just a while changed the tone of a karaoke version of the song he found online and recorded his adaptation on it : on the one hand the audio and on the other the video, which he later edited. “I just had to cut it down a bit, keeping the chorus, to get it into the TikTok era and that was it,” he notes.
what it was a recording “made more for the joke, to try” and posted on the Chinese social network, ended up going around the world. “At first I didn’t know much about the impact. I began to realize when my friends and family received them on Whatsapp or people began to quote me on the internet that I don’t know at all,” highlights the 25-year-old interpreter, whose video, the second that was posted on TikTok, accumulates more than 80,000 views on the platform and many others on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
@danielmere_ BZRP Music Session #52 with Asturian bagpipes ??#bizarrerap #biz #bizarrepsessions #quevedo #stay #for you #bagpipes #gaitaasturiana #bagpipe #cover #lentils ♬ original sound – Daniel Meré Fernánde
“I’m hallucinating with the repercussion”confesses Meré, after a success that monopolizes the conversations with his classmates, he has made his father open an account on TikTok or that Luanco yells at him that he is “the most famous piper in the world”, a compliment that he accepts with humor and humility: “What makes me most happy is knowing that I could have brought the bagpipes closer to young people who, perhaps in other circumstances, would not have had contact with it”.
After the “pitch” on social networks, and going back to the origin of the matter, that viral video of the saxophonist at the Benito Villamarín, Meré confesses that he would be especially excited to interpret it in two Asturian stadiums. “I’m from Sporting de Gijón and Marino de Luancoso I would love to be able to play the version at El Molinón or Miramar”, he assures, without closing doors to other courses in the region: “I’m one of those teams, but I’m not closed-minded”.
We all want to be there and you know it ? WHAT A PARTY THAT IS BENITO VILLAMARÍN! ?
Hears, @pedrodquevedoDoes this ring a bell to you? ? @RealBetis #LaLigaEnDAZN ⚽ pic.twitter.com/VmReBDA4oh
— DAZN Spain (@DAZN_ES) October 16, 2022
Daniel Meré, product of the first batch of Asturian bagpipes
Daniel Meré is currently a student of a higher degree in Event Management at the Avilesian Institute of The Magdalene. He came here after being one of the three members of the first promotion of Asturian bagpipes from the Superior Conservatory of Oviedo. “After I finished I didn’t have any opportunities. It was believed that when the first batch of graduates came out, the labor machinery for the pipers would start to work, but it hasn’t been like that,” laments the Bañugues man bitterly, who also complains that those in the degree musical superior are in the queue to access the master’s degree in teacher education, which has left him with no choice but to try his luck with professional training.
Given this circumstance, Meré fears that the future of this degree in Asturias is in danger. “That added to the fact that, in my opinion, the teaching guide for bagpipes in the conservatory is not appropriate, can make this go away,” he says.
To avoid this, he asks, above all, for more support from the institutions. “They should have done more for us. They haven’t promoted us enough. They didn’t place our recital on a stage and at a time where people could go, nor have orchestras such as the OSPA (Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra) encouraged us to call to play certain gigs… If it wasn’t because I do my gigs on my own, I wouldn’t have played more since I left the conservatory.“, laments Meré, proud ambassador of the bellows and the roncón: “The best of all this is the joy of having given a boost to the Asturian bagpipe”.