This 2023 will be the third year in which the Música Al Raso festival is once again on the list of Aragonese festivals, as a prelude to the busy schedule that awaits for the summer. And it does so, once again, with a very careful programming with proposals that come from near and far with a common factor: their quality. It begins this Thursday, May 18, and will conclude on June 15. Its two points of reference are repeated: the Ibercaja Stage in Plaza San Bruno and the Ambar Stage in the Winter Garden of the José Antonio Labordeta Park.
The talent of four women opens the festival this Thursday, May 18.
And for proof of that quality, a button: on May 18, on the Plaza San Bruno stage will stomp Ami Yerewolo, known as the most important rapper of Mali and recognized inside and outside as a young talent. Activist and combative, she has toured festivals around the world.
A little earlier, at 18:00 hours, the start time of the opening of ‘Al Raso’, the stage will be occupied by the Aragonese Chata Flores, female exponent of rap and reggae in the region. Afrobeat, boom bap, funky or hardcore are other of the beats that dominates this young urban artist, who is bursting with force in the Spanish scene.
This first day will be followed by women La dame blanche, the musical project of the Paris-based Cuban Yaite Ramos. Between Latin and urban, cumbia and hip hop, the daughter of Jesus “Aguaje” Ramos, artistic director of the orchestra ‘Buena Vista Social Club’ grew up near the dance and the song, but says that it was in the French capital where he could share his music with artists from around the world.
Las Ninyas del Corro, the duo of Felinna Vallejo and Laüra Bonsai, from Barcelona, will close the party in San Bruno square, with their committed songs and their own experiences in classic rap. In their latest album, ‘Onna Bugeisha’, they pay homage to “all the souls of the working class neighborhood”.
Susana Baca, Nina Persson or Cécile McLorin Salvant, some of the international voices.
On Thursday 25, the San Bruno square will be given over to roots music, which will travel from Aragon to Peru, with two very different proposals. At 19:30 Joaquín Pardinilla Sexteto will open, a group that has been performing for years his vision of Aragonese folklore and traditional music, which converges with jazz and rock.
Susana Baca, currently one of the most important names in Peruvian folklore, will take the baton at 9:00 pm. Many of the songs of this key figure in Latin American music are nourished by orality and go from the collective to the individual, to address issues such as the situation of women, slavery or racism.
The month of May will close with performances by Nina Persson and James Yorkston. The performance, which will begin at 7:30 p.m. on May 31, will allow the vocalist of the emblematic Swedish group The Cardigans to delight the audience with the duo she forms with Scottish folk singer-songwriter James Yorkston, with an affable sound accompanied by “a certain indomitable spirit”.
On Friday, June 1, the multifaceted Cécile McLorin Salvant, composer, singer and visual artist, will take the stage to display all her talent. Raised in Florida, with a French mother and Haitian father, she studied baroque music and jazz in France, two genres that she connects with blues and folk music, but also with theater and vaudeville. An opportunity to discover the talent of this musician, who won three consecutive Grammy Awards for Best Jazz Vocal Album for ‘The Window’, ‘Dreams and Daggers’ and ‘For one to love’.
La Música Al Raso is heard at the Jardín de Invierno, with free admission
The festival will culminate at the Jardín de Invierno, located in the José Antonio Labordeta Park, with three dates on Thursday, June 8, Friday, June 9 and Thursday, June 15, this year, with free admission.
Premiering the stage in this location will be the multi Grammy Award-winning Fantastic Negrito, a reference figure in contemporary blues. In 2015, this American from a family of fifteen children managed to win the ‘Tiny Desk Contest’ organized by the American public radio, among nearly 7,000 other by then unknown talents. “Blues with punk attitude”, as he defines himself, which can be heard on June 8 from 21:30.
The following day, at 22:00, the energy of the Granada band Lagartija Nick will burst into the Jardín de Invierno. This long-standing group, which has reinvented itself over three decades, is on tour to present its latest album, El perro andaluz, with which they pay tribute to Luis Buñuel and his surrealism.
Al Raso will close the curtain on June 15, with an evening that bets on young talents
It will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Winter Garden with Rada Mancy, a young Venezuelan girl based in Zaragoza who flees from labels and moves between alternative pop and urban music. She will continue with La Plazuela, a group that reinvents flamenco from Granada. They claim their roots “with a current and renewed discourse, whose main pillars are flamenco, electronic music and nu funk”. And it will close with Rojuu, a musical phenomenon that accumulates millions of listeners on the Internet and that has already been on La Resistencia, David Broncano’s program. All a bet for the new sounds that are conquering the younger audience of this festival that does not stop looking to the future.
