Cultural Periphery culminates six months of music in "very lively places"

Barcelona45 concerts in 45 municipalities is the milestone reached by the fifth edition of the Perifèria Cultural cycle. “We go to places that are very much alive,” notes Francesc Ribera, who concludes his first edition as artistic director with very positive feelings. “There are many things that emerge precisely on the periphery, outside the metropolis,” assures Ribera, also backed by his experience as a singer for the group Brams.

Perifèria Cultural 2026 closes this weekend with two double concerts: one featuring Fetus and Trinxats at La Cumprativa in Llorenç del Penedès (Friday at 8 p.m.), and another with Mazoni and Marcel Casellas i la Vella Clúndia at the Celler Cooperatiu in Espolla (Sunday at 12:30 p.m.). In other words, the cycle maintains a format that seeks to foster affinities that are not necessarily stylistic. “I have the intuition that a person can like apparently different things. In fact, I am interested in that happening –explains Ribera–. For example, instead of programming two rumba groups, one well-known and another emerging, they program one of rumba and another of a different style,” he says, citing as an example a concert in Calaceit where Quimi Portet and the habanera group A Romandre performed. The advantage of the small format proposed by Perifèria Cultural is that Ribera could speak personally with a good part of the audience and receive their impressions at the foot of the stage.

The School of Song at the Vila dels RCR

The Perifèria Cultural and the Barnasants, two initiatives that are like cousins if not sisters, are promoting the first edition of the Song School with the Taller de Músics and the CAT Tradicionàrius. It will be held from November 17 to 20 at the Villa of the RCR architects, in La Garrotxa. With Lluís Llach as the protagonist of the inaugural session, the school will bring together a dozen students who will share workshops, listening sessions, and meetings with artists. “The Song School has two inseparable objectives: that new generations know the tradition from which they come and that we once again have songs that say things –explains Ribera–. Often, the problem with some of today's songs is that they are made without the prior reflection of having clear what one wants to explain. Often, the problem is that we don't know what to say”.