Claiming the stage
Feminism enters the music scene in the Països Catalans with a will, as seen in acts such as El Diluvi, Clara Peya and Roba Estesa
L’escenari és nostre” (The stage is ours) sings Valencian rapper, Tesa, in a video with her sister, Krazy, and Pupil·les Dilatives. “You only ever see males on stage,” goes the song. “Girl, take sides, you have more than enough reasons to make a hit,” the lyrics insist. L’escenari és nostre is one example underlining the emergence of artists with a feminist message throughout the Catalan Countries, and Valencia plays a central role.
Another example is El Diluvi, from Alcoià, a group many people first heard about when Anna Gabriel named Alegria “her favourite album” in a report on women and music by Enderrock magazine. “Many of us women put on this song [I tu, sols tu] and it gives us energy,” admitted the CUP politician.
El Diluvi have released Ànima, which sets its stall out in favour of sexual liberation. Tendresa insubmisa, for example, was written by activist Majo Domènech, who also wrote I tu, sols tu, a song that is now a hit all over the country. “It is good for feminism to have an anthem,” says El Diluvi member, Andreu Ferré. “We didn’t know this would happen, but perhaps it was the right moment and this song came out just at the right time.”
Pupil·les Dilatives, a female hip hop trio also from Valencia, insist that “the public is calling for a debate on feminism.” “In Valencia there were groups up for the fight, but where was the gender struggle?” asks Natàlia Pons. “Music reflects society and it has taken until now for there to be women-only groups.” The band’s second and latest album, Les silenciades, is “a tribute to the silence our mothers and grandmothers had to suffer.”
The feminist wave can traced to other artists that preceded it. Sextet Roba Estesa, for example, is based on three concepts: “women, struggle and tradition”. Set up four years ago, in March the band won four Enderrock prizes. “In the Pyrenees it is a traditional song also found in other versions around Catalonia, which deals with women’s autonomy,” the band explained on El Punt Avui Televisió. “A girl tells her mother she wants to dance in the square, and she tells her not to go because her husband, or brother in some versions, will hit her. Faced with these threats, we say to the mother that we will be brave women without fear.”
From a different angle, Clara Peya pays tribute to women through water, in Oceanes, her new album. “The women I like are those that make noise when they laugh; who scuff their knees and eat honey, bread and olives; who wear their hair short and furiously black; and no wolf can stop them nor can any type of beast control them,” goes a song with the same name as the album. “Making a feminist album is a way of becoming responsible as an artist and acting as a loud speaker,” she insists: “Without a women’s revolution we will not save the planet...”
Today’s rise of feminism in music is also to be seen with Les Kol·lontai (a project that came out of the Barnasants festival and that brings together Montse Castellà, Sílvia Comes, Meritxell Gené and Ivette Nadal), as well as the young singer Bad Gyal, whose impactful line –“In the neighbourhood you know which pussy is boss”– makes it clear who is in charge as far as rap in Catalonia is concerned.