There is no wild boar that ends the musical wonder of L'Arannà

BarcelonaIt was a close call that a wild boar didn't turn a concert review into an epitaph. "Remember this name: L'Arannà". This was the title of ARA about the concert that the Ibizan-Empordà duo had performed at the Fira Mediterrània de Manresa on October 11, 2025. "The day after the concert, we were driving on the A2 and suddenly a wild boar appeared from the right. I swerved, the car started to wobble and hit a concrete barrier. We miraculously didn't flip over," recalls Anna Sala (Sant Feliu de Guíxols, 1996). "The car was destroyed, but we weren't hurt. And the instruments either. If we had died, that article would have been an epitaph," adds Lara Magrinyà (Ibiza, 1993). Both had just presented the show Turmarí, which next autumn will become an album, and which in recent months has already made L'Arannà one of the most exciting musical projects in the country thanks to the way they delve into the tradition of Ibizan double singing with contemporary tools and mentality. They will demonstrate this once again this Friday, June 26, at the L'Ateneu Auditorium in Banyoles (8 p.m.), as part of the (a)phònica festival program.

They climb the ancestral fig tree and at the same time critically look at the discotheque that has modified the landscape of Ibiza. "On the one hand, we have the root, represented by the double singing, but in some songs we add a harder electronic sound," confirms Magrinyà. And Sala adds the latent conflict between the two cultures: "Often, double singing and peasant dance have been ridiculed as a sign of low culture, and the idea has been transmitted that those who have come from outside to set up the nightlife businesses have come to bring wealth and save the island." Arannà, a contraction of Lara and Anna, tackle the conflict with judgment and good humor, and above all with an artistic concern that has led them to go beyond what they offered in the notable La salamandra (Blau Atzavara, 2024), an album inspired by Mercè Rodoreda.

To top it all off, and as if it were a bad omen, that October of 2025, Anna Sala's father, the writer Toni Sala, had recently published the novel Scenarios, which begins with a traffic accident and whose cover shows a wild boar. "We've already told him to include the lottery on the cover of the next novel," jokes Magrinyà. Anna Sala, incidentally, points to her father as one of L'Arannà's role models: "I've always seen him as a person very dedicated to his craft, which is something we also replicate." The other role models mentioned in the conversation are Joana Gomila and Laia Vallès. "We've looked up to them," admits Sala; as Magrinyà says, "they live completely immersed in artistic research."

The song that appeals to the core

Formed at Esmuc and researchers by nature, Sala and Magrinyà were looking for a challenge that "made sense" for them. Sala, from Empordà, was unaware of the double singing, that primordial mantra of laryngeal vibrato which is interpreted with the company of a drum in Ibiza and Formentera. Magrinyà, from Ibiza, knew it but had never heard it live, nor in Christmas carols. "I hadn't experienced the tradition from the inside, nor with family. In Ibiza and Formentera there are people who perform redoblat singing, not many, and more focused on the traditional sphere. We accessed a digital archive and immediately saw that it was something very different from everything else, although it appeals deeply to the core. It seemed to us that it would be very interesting to work with redoblat singing to create modern songs," says Magrinyà. "I was very impressed the first time I heard Lara redoblando. She learned it right away," assures Sala. The rigor learned in classical training, the investigative curiosity, the respect for traditional techniques and contexts, and boldness shaped the highly recommended adventure of Turmeric (a name that brings together the two most common surnames in Ibiza).

Just before the accident, they were trying to assimilate the press's praise. "We had been very focused on the Turmarí project for months, and we arrived in Manresa quite stressed," recalls Sala. "And the day after the concert, reviewing what had been written about it, we realized that what we were doing was solid," explains Magrinyà. In the subsequent presentation at the Càntut Festival and in many concerts, also across Europe, they have obtained the validation, the admiration, in fact, of the public. The buzz and bookings have added stress, welcome stress, to the recording of the album. "For us, live performance is the most important thing, and in concerts, you see how the songs mature before recording them," comments Magrinyà. "This way, we see how we divide the work on stage and what is the most powerful way to interpret this material. But after Manresa, we have a lot of work and we have to combine gigs with recording the album. It's more complicated than if you do the album first and then the concerts come out," adds Sala.

At the performance at the Càntut Festival in Cassà de la Selva, L'Arannà invited Isidor Marí and Víctor Planells, members of the legendary Ibizan trio Uc, to sing Jo tenc una enamorada with them and the audience. "It was the first time a well-known figure from Ibizan music had contact with our songs, and it was very exciting," recalls Magrinyà. Toni Manonelles, an essential disseminator of Pitiüsan popular culture, was also there. "Toni was super happy, and that gave us a sense of calm...", says Sala. Thus, various validations converged: from the public, from programmers, from the press, and from the roots music scene. It is exciting that L'Arannà works with the tradition of sung duets, but the most important thing is that they excite and impact with their songs. No wild boar can end the musical wonder of L'Arannà.