A Lapsed Catholic Goes to Rosalía’s Ecclesiastical Lux Tour
How the Spanish star uses devotion to push her art to unprecedented places.
Last November, I stepped foot in a Catholic church for the first time in two decades. A cathedral by my apartment named after Saint Mary—just like the one I attended growing up—was hosting a sacred music concert by its in-house chamber group, the Theotokos Ensemble. The theme was “Music and Monasticism in the 12th Century”; if there’s one thing Catholics know, it’s music and monasticism (for better or worse), and I was intrigued by the idea of hearing a full choir accompanied by strings and piano in the cavernous acoustics of a church to let my faith issues go, at least for one night.
At the show, red candles flickered below paintings of La Virgen de Guadalupe, and a calming, sepia-toned light surrounded the performers, whose harmonies sounded like the color spectrum made manifest. Before the ensemble began its echoing swirl of cellos, violas, and voices in holy-sounding minor keys, my friend Caryn took a picture of me in the pews. I was wearing a puke-green sweater, with my hands in the prayer position, looking every bit the nice Catholic girl I was before I quit the church at age 17. Back then, in the 1990s, I was a young Chicana who needed to explore the world outside of my congregation, and I simply couldn’t countenance the church’s stance toward LGBTQ people and women. (The Vatican has become somewhat more liberal than it used to be thanks to a succession of “cool” popes, though I still keep it at arm’s length.)
Importantly, unlike the Saint Mary’s of my youth, the church that hosted the concert is inclusive, and a number of the Theotokos Ensemble members are openly queer and trans. The group’s presence, and transcendance, reminded me that the most important values I learned from my Catholic upbringing were charity, empathy, and doing everything you can to help those in need. Jesús-visiting-the-lepers type shit.
I was reminded of these complicated feelings while watching Rosalía perform at Madison Square Garden earlier this month, during a Lux tour that is absolutely dripping with Catholic symbolism.
