Vida is reborn with Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, Kae Tempest, and Future Islands

Vilanova i la GeltrúIf 2024 was the time to celebrate the first decade of Life, this year the mission (explicit in the hashtags promotional) was to go beyond the anniversary and bring the Vilanova i la Geltrú festival to a new life. This resulted in a lineup that explored areas that had been little explored in the event's programming, an aspect that was particularly noticeable on the main day, Friday, July 4, led by the Argentinians Ca7riel & Paco Amoroso, who exhibit trap muscle with a tendency toward lyrical mischief. The duo performed with a band that enhanced the Latin rhythms of their performance, which might have gone unnoticed by those following the concert on screen, since the performance never strayed from the focus of the two lead vocalists. It might have seemed an eccentric move for those who associate Vida with indie pop, but the feeling was that of watching a team playing at home, in front of a legion of fans who returned every wink of the rhymes. In fact, it was the only moment of the entire weekend when, to secure a good spot, they had to deal with the kind of confines the festival prides itself on avoiding.

Kae Tempest then harnessed the energy of the party and transformed it into something else, angrier but profoundly beautiful. Happy to be performing in the land where she finished writing some of her poems on the same day her fifth album was released, Self titled, the artist offered a spoken word Vertiginous but clearly articulated; words that bare their fangs to oppressive power and, above all, create community. The list of styles not usually heard within the confines of the Masía d'en Cabanyes and the adjacent forest (as always, appropriately decorated and lit) was expanded the following day with the vibrant, Jamaican-influenced jazz of the British quintet Ezra Collective, a festival surge.

The welcome injection of sonic diversity did not, however, alter the characteristic features of Vida, which maintains practically unchanged the dynamics of its operation (with one notable exception: the organization has decided to retire the ticket sales system for events, a vestige of the first dataphones and immaterial transactions) and the distribution of spaces, including the already iconic El Barco stage, as visually idyllic as it is unprotected from noise pollution, which particularly caused the Japanese artist Ichiko Aoba to suffer, who presented a folk crossed by tropicalist currents at times accompanied by chatty humanity.

Yerai Cortés, Mamá Dousha, Mushkaa and The Ludwig Band

The festival's identity was also recognized in the complicit environment it creates for state artists, such as Yerai Cortés, who staged the show. Choral guitar avoiding all temptation of virtuosity jondo (to the point of playing a song with his back to the audience, leaving his prodigious fingering of the six strings out of view), and especially the Catalan groups: it is enough to refer to Mama Dousha's surprise at the number of spectators who came to dance Rikiti when the sun was still high. Or to the triumph of Mushkaa, who already has several generational anthems in their repertoire and directs the audience's emotions with a confidence as precocious as it is incontestable. Honorable mention goes to The Ludwig Band, who reserved the opening concert space of the festival on Thursday the 3rd, and who presented themselves as a big band, adding brass brilliance to the collection of stage gags (celebrated by newcomers and veterans alike) and incorporating Ned's keyboard, who a couple of days later also officiated an authentic Mediterranean ritual around the oceanic vocal depth ofIt is a question.

And, evidently, Vida's DNA was also recognized in the Anglophilia that dominated the top of the lineup, with the working-class elegance of Richard Hawley, who sought to unite his native Sheffield with Vilanova. Also with the young Royel Otis, who make the guitars dance and muster an unfaltering enthusiasm between their repertoire and the accelerated versions of Sophie Ellis-Bextor and The Cranberries, and with The Lemon Twigs, determined to travel back in time to an era when power still harmonized. And, finally, with two benchmarks from the category of pop middleweights: on the one hand, Supergrass, who measured before the audience how relevant the songs from the album were. And should Coco, their most beloved album, which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2025. And the Americans Future Islands, led by the extraordinary charisma of their singer, Samuel T. Harring, who applies almost metallic guttural inflections to his melodic odysseys, and who sweats, writhes and tears his clothes like Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire while inventing dance steps worthy of Denis Lavant from the film Beautiful work.

After the collection of snapshots accumulated during its three days, the magical forest of Vida, like Brigadoon, has vanished, but not before noting on the calendar the dates of its next rebirth, July 2, 3 and 4, 2026, with the New Zealanders Balu.