Alberto Guijarro, head of the Barcelona Sala Apolo and one of the main partners of the Spring Sound I couldn’t smile more on Sunday night. Him and the whole team. The festival that this year opened in Sao Paulo (Brazil) the landing of the brand in South America ended almost cheered by the events and by a happy and bloodless public exhausted the last hours. Close to 100,000 visits spread over two days, with a large part of the public repeating attendance on both, left no room for error: it was an overwhelming success, also based on a very young public, much more than that of Barcelona.
The management of the space, an enclosure of 400,000 square meters, five stages and certain complications given its relative narrowness in some sections had been saved with flying colors, leaving no room for crowds and allowing the flow of the public. Everything that could go well went well and apparently nothing bad in a contest greeted by the local public with support that was manifested in the incessant collection of photos that everyone took in front of the mobile poster with the name of the festival that is already a brand of the house The feeling was the same as in the first editions of the FIB in Benicàssim: an orphan public finally had a festival that thinks of them. Now they play the editions of Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. The brand grows. Those who claim that Barcelona is in decline will have to look for arguments in other areas.
Brazil is a country where music articulates identity, but until now it only attended the public in a large festival format mainstream mainly through Rock in Rio and Lollapalooza, general festivals with zip lines. Spring Sound it’s just music, aimed at those who don’t focus on the most popular artists, looking for novelty in a field that could generically be considered independent. And the public has responded. To this must be added a great success of the contest, that slogan “no one is normal” that welcomes all people who understand gender and sexuality as a personal option not subject to discussion.
After four years of Bolsonarism and a masculinity that could have been studied by the primatologist Jane Goodall, the feeling of liberation took over the LGTBI collective, which, protected by a festival that offers them a safe environment, showed its best lights in a more varied and colorful environment. than the fruity options of the caipirinha. They, they and those who do not fit in the binary were able to publicly show their affection without fear of any angry reaction, giving rise to touching situations cradled by music. Undoubtedly, this has been one of the key arguments that have massively mobilized the collective and have been in tune with the open-mindedness and vitality of a city like São Paulo, economic and cultural capital of the country and a city that makes one think of Madrid and Barcelona in very modest terms.
In keeping with this, and as yet another proof that women are achieving undeniable prominence in the musical field, Primavera Sound Sao Paulo has been a festival fundamentally for them. björk offered a sensational concert, dressing up his electronic crockery with a string orchestra not to perform Fossora his last and demanding album, of which only sounded ovulatebut to review part of his classics with special mention to Vulniculture. With that voice, that way of projecting it, that personality and those fascinating dresses not fit to get into a taxi, she could sing against a background of squawking seagulls and the result would be the same: amazing and captivating.
What affects the most is what happens closest. To not miss anything, subscribe.
Similarly, it is worth noting the name of the North American Phoebe Bridges, who on the last day of the festival suggested that we could be facing a future great star. A very delicate scenery based on drop-down stories that, when opened, showed scenes in gradual evolution, set a stage in the dark where she shone, endowed with a sweet voice that does not hide a character capable of fitting in with a chusquero sergeant interpreting with meaning some songs that in her tenuous beauty do not hide the harshness of life, they structured a concert with the soul of a pop singer-songwriter based on ballads. And hushing a mostly ballad crowd at a big festival requires more than just the beauty of pieces like Garden Song, Punisher either Moon Songall of them from punisher, his last album. Opening for Taylor Swift in some cities in the United States can only enlarge her figure.
As he did accompany Lorde in the concert of the New Zealander, another of the greats of the festival. As soon as he started, he went out so that together they could sing Stoned At The Nail Salon, both sitting on Lorde’s beautiful stage, both proving that to subdue a crowd you don’t have to raise your voice. Lorde’s concert continued later, and only an irrepressible fondness for presenting the songs with long speeches stuffed with common places could weigh down the performance, much better than the one offered in Barcelona last summer. He has a voice, he has songs, a fragility that stops just short of flabby candor, he knows how to dose intimacy and dance notes, always restrained, just enough to make the crowd jump. In addition, he was before the Brazilian public, so knowledgeable and musically so learned that everyone knew the lyrics to all the songs. From her and all the other artists on the poster. It is not an exaggeration. Miquel Sospedra, Amaia’s bass player, put it into words, who while watching the Los Planetas concert —priceless J speaking to the public in his phonetic purée— said that “they are cultured and respectful even with artists they don’t know like Amaia. They looked at us with interest and applauded us. Some even knew the lyrics. They are as curious as the French public.” While Second prize opened the concert with a cyclopean coupling that threatened to collapse the sambódromo where it took place.
Among the local presence, completed by Carolina Durante and JohnTalabot, only Bad Gyal raised her head on the bill, especially in a concert held in the hall before nearly 3,000 people inside the Primavera A Cidade, where the LGTBI community elevated her as the new goddess of perreo in what was his first concert in Brazil. Women who show power are liked, and in Brazil not by adolescents like in Spain, the bulk of its public, but by non-normative people.
And the presence of Spanish artists on the bill, which could lead one to think in terms of a franchise festival, proves just the opposite. Primavera has the local support of Live Nation Brasil, but it is not a franchise in the strict sense, since its managers have assembled the poster and supervised even the smallest details of production, including, literally, the tension of the canvases of the food establishments, where by the way quinoa has not arrived. To this has been added an exchange of experiences from which the Primavera in Spain will benefit, such as a hypothetical and future delivery of the wristbands to the home once the tickets have been purchased, which was done in Sao Paulo. And the most important thing is that the festival is not the same as in Barcelona, as its poster included a large Brazilian presence, among which the extraordinary concert by singer-songwriter Tim Bernardes stood out, who filled the covered auditorium with almost 3,000 people unleashing the madness of the audience, or the mythical Hermeto Pascoal, who also performed a jazz concert in the auditorium with an Amazonian richness and a capacity for improvisation that justified the curious seats in the venue, with the seat and back moving so that you can dance sitting down. The eighty-year-old multi-instrumentalist from Arapiraca demonstrated once again the height of his legend, which reaches even the youngest audience at a pop festival. By the way, in Brazil just for the fact of studying, being trained, in whatever, there is a 50% discount on shows, Spring included.
Nor should we forget the success of muscular proposals such as those of the Arctic Monkeys, who performed a more fibrous concert than what their last album shows, leaning towards virtues such as crooner by Alex Turner and Travis Scott, on the same stage the day after. The Travis thing was curious, since its scenery, with two kinds of intimidating towers, smoke to cover Sao Paulo with mist, fire to roast the cattle herd in Argentina and more lasers than in the attack on the Death Star, he recalled for rustic to those of AC/DC. Masculinities that touch each other, although they are formulated in different sounds, which in the case of Travis only pooled in the delicate Love Galorethe piece he sings with SZA, to end up exploding in thunder like Sicko Mode or the end goosebumps in which he invited up on his elevated platform—yes, rappers are above everyone and close to God, they seem to think—a follower who rapped with him. It was just one year after the deadly avalanche of his concert in Texas and the anniversary could not have been more placid.
Now Primavera goes to Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. That everything goes as well as in Sao Paulo seems like a dream.
You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya at Facebook Y Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter
We would like to give thanks to the author of this write-up for this awesome material
The Primavera Sound festival begins its expansion throughout South America with great success in Sao Paulo