Whoever is tempted to think that music in Catalan lives off the melancholic invocation of the ‘nova cançó’ or the rockers of the 90s are a little lost. The indicators of language use among young people will be what they are, but the truth is that The Catalan-singing scene is experiencing a radical regeneration and in tune with global trends, although many of these artists escape the radar of the IEC and practice a bastard Catalan, full of indecipherable neologisms for those over 25 and with lyrical grafts in Spanish, English or whatever.
We can now talk about a leading squad of four artists, The Tyets, JulietFiga Flawas and Mushkaa, which TV3’s ‘La Marató’ brought together a few weeks ago at the Fòrum. There are a few more, but these are the four I ‘Enderrock’ dedicate a report this month. He has not chosen them by hand: as the publication notes, 17 of the 25 most listened to Catalan songs in 2023 were supplied by them. The first, ‘Coti x coti’, by The Tyets, that song that has made ‘fadrins’ and ‘senyores Maria’ dance to reggaeton thinking it is a sardana (which it is too). The landscape of this magazine with 31 years of history has changed fundamentally: I see no trace of Sau nor of Lax’n’Bustoand yes double pages on emerging artists such as Lau Gibert, Fortuu either Pelat i Pelut.
Until now, the generational changes in music in Catalan seemed to avoid the traumatic shock: Goat Soup a follower of Lluís Llachand the admirer of Gerard Quintana and company could be attracted to Manuel. Even for Txarango. Now there is a slightly more severe cut, and perhaps it could be said that “finally.” What occupies the new center is still pop, but passed through the urban and very electronic filter. Whether we are scandalized or not: concerts with hardly any instruments on stage, with dancers, giving priority to spectacle over instrumental exercise (like those of Rosalia).
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of a scene that is experiencing a hectic time, in which, between rhymes in ‘auto-tune’ and perreos ‘nostrats’, even such unexpected artifacts as a rock group can emerge, The Ludwig Bandor that Barcelona-style version of The Pogues called The Prancing Ponyespecially indicated for those who still maintain that “all music in Catalan sounds the same.”