Remember this name: L'Arannà

ManresaThe 28th edition of the Manresa Mediterranean Fair, which concludes this Sunday after three days of preliminary performances, was a successful and stimulating experience. Large audiences attended most of the shows, especially along the axis between Plaça Neus Català and Plaça Sant Domènec, with active audience participation in dance-based performances such as La Coixinera. The artistic level was very high. This was expected in the cases of established artists such as Sol Picó and Juan Carlos Lérida, La Venidera, and Cocanha. It was also surprising in emerging artists such as L'Arannà and Alosa, and in the presentation of projects recently launched by Obrador de Raíz, such as Unmarried by Magalí Sare and Bread by Anna Ferrer.

"We've found a treasure," said Ibizan Lara Magrinyà, partner of Empordà native Anna Sala in the duo L'Arannà. The treasure is the popular heritage of the Pitiusas, which both convey by combining contemporary sounds (basically electronic) with traditional ones, such as doubled singing and the playing of the tambourine, giant castanets, and espasino (an iron bar that can sound like a theremin). All of this comes together in the project. Turmarine, created from the musical heritage of Ibiza and Formentera, two islands where the surnames Tur i Marí are common. On the album The salamander (2024), inspired by stories by Mercè Rodoreda, El Arannà had already aligned themselves with similar aesthetic coordinates to Cocanha and Tarta Relena. Now they're shaping their own personality, claiming and celebrating tunes and double-dubbed songs to explain the present of the Pitiusas with intention and a sense of humor. "While Formentera competed to have the biggest fig tree, Ibiza competed to have the biggest nightclub," they say, and they illustrate it with tech-house rhythms (and Locomía vains) that could sound in an Ibizan club.

The show, beautifully crafted with lighting and synchronized gestures, respects the past while simultaneously creating with imagination, as when they speculate about what would have happened if Pink Floyd or Mike Oldfield, illustrious visitors to Ibiza, had composed a song inspired by the long melody of the country dance. In addition, Magrinyà's voice has a great capacity to move, as occurred in a song dedicated to the Podarcios pityusensis, the lizard endemic to the Pitiusas, now threatened by the introduction of snakes: he sang it in the blues, expressing the emotion like Adele does in her ballads. The ovation in the small Kursaal hall was unanimous. Let's remember its name: L'Arannà.

Also pay attention to Magalí Sare's new adventure: Unmarried, which stretches the thread of a Slovak song about the lament with which a family sends their daughter off to get married. "In the past, and still today in some countries"Marriage has been a traumatic experience for women," said the Barcelona singer. She illustrates this by recovering songs from different traditions and linguistic domains (Catalan, French, Occitan, Slovak, Portuguese, Galician...), always with exquisite and expressive intonation. Indeed, there is the trauma, the tremulous voice The chanterelle, one of the popular songs that best explains what women heard as "misfortunes": "Commend me to Mother, nightingale, [...] and not so much to Father, because he has mistreated me; / he has given me to a shepherd / who makes me guard the flock." The Conservatory Theatre fell silent while she sang it.

But Sare, very cleverly, also fills Unmarried celebratory, as when she recalls Rosalía de Castro's vindication of singlehood and when she revives the advice that some Portuguese grandmothers give to young women not to get married yet. Musically, it is told with the usual harmonic richness and with a whole display of timbres and colors, those contributed by cellist Irene Romo (of the group Alondra), double bassist Manel Fortià, guitarist Sebastià Gris, violinist Laura Urteaga and about forty others. One of the shows of the season. El cajón del olvido is full of good conceptual intentions, fortunately; Magalí Sare manages to convey ideas and emotions through the songs, without the conceptual apparatus imposing itself on the music. It is the same thing that L'Arannà achieves with Turmarine.

Irene Romo, one of the instrumentalists in Magalí Sare's concert, had performed two days earlier at the same Mediterranean Fair with Alosa, the group she shares with Giulietta Vidal. They presented the songs from the album at the Els Carlins venue. The first song of the morning, published by Cerámicas Guzmán, the Manel label. They stir up the popular Catalan songbook, they stir it up without solemnity, and with a coherent musical aesthetic they interpret traditional material such as Basket weaving ladybug and The Lady of Aragon and his own compositions such as City girls, and when they recover Under the elm, they make her talk with a new song, The baker, to tell this story of extramarital affairs from the woman's point of view.

Cocanha, a reference

The theme of "miscasadas" also appears in one of the songs performed by the Occitan band Cocanha at the Kursaal Theatre on Saturday. Once again, a packed concert by Lila Fraysse and Caroline Dufau, who previewed songs from the album. Flame folklore, which they will release next year. Extravagant folklore, yes, with polyphonic wonders, just the right amount of electronics, a highly creative use of the string drum, and rhythmic magic generated by hands and feet. Cocahna, a model for a group of very young bands when it comes to creating with tradition, sang of the women who, according to legend, tamed a mythological horse so they could ride it and go for walks without fear or a protective man; they also sang of the fight for environmentalism and the preservation of the landscape and the vindication of the subaltern classes. And, of course, in a repertoire sung in Occitan, there was no shortage of cries for the language. They are admirable artists, who make admirable and stimulating music.

The Passion according to Saint Child of Elche

The Kursaal's main hall also hosted the album presentation on Friday. Raw, by Niño de Elche and Raül Refree, with stage direction by Marta Pazos that included a large blue curtain, the specialized workers' dresses of the two musicians and a kind of giant egg, pill or eggplant that hung from the ceiling and gave the effect of a sacred monolith. Raw It is a further step in the collaboration that the Barcelona musician and the singer from Elx have woven; one installed in a more or less tense electronic environment and with a prominent presence of the organ sound, and the other exploring the possibilities of being both crooner and singer, and taking advantage of the resources offered by the microphone's dynamics. The result, from less to more, is sufficiently successful, although it leaves little room for the audience's reaction, who couldn't express themselves by applauding until twenty minutes into the concert.

One of the most interesting moments came when Refree switched from electronics to acoustic guitar (which he plays with the industrial impetus of Blixa Bargeld) and Niño de Elche sang the verses of Ernesto Cardenal "My God, why have you forsaken me? / I am a caricature of a man / They make fun of me in every newspaperBeyond the possible personal identification that the singer maintains with these words, the spiritual cry of it all became more explicit, as if the show were staging the Passion according to Saint Child of Elche (with Refree as choirmaster), and were moving towards a finale, a mixture of sacrifice and ecstasy that, when it arrived, provoked a good portion.