"Zoo is a historical anomaly in the Valencian Community: since Raimon, no one has gone so far."

BarcelonaThe first time that critic and musicologist Josep Vicent Frechina felt the unmistakable blessed ofSummer, the first single by the Valencian group Zoo, already thought that the then new project of Pancho, nickname of Toni Sánchez, was promising. reproductions in a few days, although that success would be the prelude to a meteoric career that would break territorial and linguistic barriers and elevate the band from Monet in the "historical anomaly" category. "Since Raimon, no musical proposal in the Valencian Country has gone so far," says Frechina in conversation with ARA.

Students from Albacete covering that first Summer, a pro-Palestinian protest in Cuba with the song Avant in the background and the fragment of "the palm tree that withstands the hurricane" included in a football article in the newspaper Ace These are the three images with which Frechina starts the book. Always against and ahead (Siembra Libros), and which serve to illustrate the scope of the phenomenon that the Gandia group represented, retired from the stage in July 2024. Over 150 pages, the musicologist deciphers the keys to Zoo's success through their lyrics, steeped in "complexity" and with "different levels of interpretation": "Pancho doesn't get inspired and write everything in one go, but rather works and works, takes out the rhyming dictionary, the... artisanal one," he explains.

In the same way that the group combined unorthodox rap with elements of singer-songwriter music, and electronic bases with the force of the winds, the convergence of political and social criticism with subjectivity and one's own emotions is, for Frechina, what sets Zoo apart from the scene. The group integrated elements of Obrint Pas, La Gossa Sorda, Horchata, and Aspencat, but "reformulated them into an optimized and personalized version," he writes. And going beyond political slogans, eschewing the pamphlet, and asserting the right to contradiction gave them the empathy and identification of a much broader, intergenerational audience.Not in vain, the topic Fans, "an outcry against the guardians of coherence," as the book's author defines it, is the group's most-streamed song on Spotify, with more than 15 million plays.

After a first album, Storms are coming from the south (2014), which exceeded all expectations, with Raval (2017) Zoo "definitively crossed the boundaries of the alternative circuit," notes the musicologist. Without a major record label behind them, and "driven exclusively by the strength of songs that were gaining followers," the group was adding posters of sold out throughout Spain and reached audiences all over the world: from France to Japan, via Palestine. And it arrived, above all, in Valencian, which turned the language into a "massive cultural vehicle," Frechina points out. "What Zoo has done is linguistic empowerment; he has injected self-esteem into the speakers," he adds.

With the publication of Candies (2021), the band fully exploited "the balance between the political and the festive elements," a recipe cooked up in the lyrics and served on stage with the "seny" of Panxo and the "arrebato" of Arnau Giménez, guitar and second vocalist of the group. Hedonism, friendship, care, and mental health are some of the themes of the post-pandemic album with which the group reached its peak. This was evident in their work. the 15,000 people who filled the Palau Sant Jordi in December 2022 and, especially and due to the symbolic value of the milestone, the 8,000 who had recently surrendered to Zoo at the WiZink Center in Madrid.

The culmination of this double summit is one of the elements that led Zoo, at its peak and to the surprise of almost everyone, to announce its farewell on January 7, 2024. Panxo, who had conceived the ten years of his career as "cycles that must close", had already given some clues about his farewell three years earlier. Posthumous song, where he gave his fans "the naked corpse", his "legacy" and the "job done". He left behind a songbook with around forty lyrics, many of which became fighting hymns and others mainstream hits, as Slide, and made a request for the future: "Whoever comes after me, let him row, let him row."

For Frechina, however, "the gap left by Zoo is enormous," especially in a context of the return of the right to Valencian institutions. The artist is "unpredictable." He thus questions the "two plus two equals four" that Zoo sang in The teacher in a subtle tribute to Ovidi Montllor. Only time will tell if there is room for a reunion in the future or if the Monet, like the singer-songwriter from Alcoy, will continue on vacation.