Music festivals head towards the Mallorca countryside

“For me, the distinction must be made first of all, one thing is what Mobofest has done so far, which for example in Lloret with the straws already made clear that they were betting on this, and the other thing is Mallorca Live, which the name says it all,” explains musician Mikel Serra, who is also a technical agronomist. “When festivals are organized by associations, by people from abroad, I do not see them as negative. It seems to me a desire to distance ourselves from festivals imported from abroad and link them to the personality here. What distinguishes us most within the group is the land, the place we come from, and this connection can “It is unconscious. However, if there is a folklorization or simplification of the field, a diminution of the usual stereotypes, this is indeed unfortunate and carries an additional risk.”

Environmental and musical party

In fact, Serra is one of the organizers of FEiM!, an event that will take place on June 8 in the n’Hereveta park in Porreres and whose name sums up its essence and objectives: it is an environmental and musical concert “coinciding with the 18 years of the founding of Apaema (Association of Agro-Ecological Production in Mallorca) and the anniversary The 30th of the CBPAE (Balearic Council for Agro-Environmental Production) and we decided to have a joint party in which we want to show that we have a dynamic agriculture sector, which tries to do different things and wants to show itself to the general public, with the active participation of which everything will be as organic and local as possible “On organic barley to make a beer of this type for the first time on the island.” “The point is that there are many slogans to this effect, which allow emphasizing what agricultural activity means to the economy and society. But all these things come from within, and no telecom company has thought about how to sell something that has nothing to do with it.” Among the groups that will perform are Mikel Serra himself, the Petsorense or Anemos Baric, groups that have also contributed to this new cultural movement related to the Mallorcan countryside.

“I’m very local,” says Julia Pickernell, singer and composer for the band Anemos Barrick. “I live in Sant Joan, and one day I go to a pine grove, and another day I go for a walk with my farmer friends. It’s my daily life, and I try not to indoctrinate it, but it’s part of our songs because it’s our background and our environment.” “What doesn’t make sense to me is “I write songs about aliens or about sitting on the couch watching Netflix, things that have nothing to do with me.”

Although Pickornel admits that there is “no indoctrination intent” in his songs, he realizes that the message they send resonates with people of all generations and backgrounds. “Seeing six- or seven-year-olds singing songs with people of my parents’ generation is very moving,” says the singer, who has already finished the second album of the tentatively titled group. Bury they stopped“But I mostly stand by what a friend of mine recently told me, which is that if he had listened to our songs when he was younger, he would have liked everything around him more. I think we can’t ask for much more than that.”

Among the songs that were part of Ánimos Parrec’s debut are: Old songs, urgent songs, contains “Ses fites netas”, a theme that begins with the following stanza: “Who will pass on his genes? / Who will plow the fields? / Who will sow all the grain? / No one will do it again.” “Ten years ago, anyone who criticized Tourism is suffering from tourismophobia, and while everyone now knows that we have reached the limit, except the hoteliers,” continues Pickcornel, “the same applies to the countryside. “We can’t turn our backs on it, these are the conversations we have to have in the coming years, and that’s why I think the music also reflects this broad awakening in agricultural Mallorca.” In fact, the group he leads has become a mainstay of this music scene, and in addition to his performance at the ARA Balears Awards, which will take place next May 22 at the Es Baluard Museum in Palma, he has been the protagonist of the “Agrifest” that will play at FEiM! This will be repeated at one of the festivals that in the past decade has contributed greatly to these new views towards the Mallorcan countryside, Mobofest.

“Contemporary rural Mallorca”

Mobofest, organized by a non-profit association, has been recognized on several occasions as one of the best initiatives in the rural environment by the Cultural Observatory of the Contemporánea Foundation, along with other initiatives in the Balearic Islands such as EiMa de Maria. de la Salut or FIET of Vilafranca de Bonany, as well as state proposals such as the Semana de Cine Rural y Ecológico which takes place in the city of La Esperanza, in Tenerife, or the DAR (Women Artists of Rural) project originating in the (Mancomonetat de la Serranía in Valencia). The emergence of these initiatives, in addition to the success of films such as The Karas Written by Carla Simon or books like Land of women Written by Maria Sanchez, Rural Di Vanessa Freixa confirms that this is a general trend among creatives and culture managers who choose to place their projects in the environments they know best.

“The demand for the countryside came naturally to us because it was close to us,” says Joan Roig, one of the organizers of Mobofest and also the environment and rural scientist advisor to the Sant Joan City Council. “Everyone who has done MOBO so far has this truth and in both Sant Joan and Lloret we didn’t have to look for it, we got it. Now, in Porreres, we have kept the essence of not imposing anything but because that is where we feel comfortable: do we want something Practically let’s sit on it? The straw bales are gone. It has nothing to do with the design.” However, this year they launched a slogan to demand this connection, and it became known as the “Plan Festival.” “It took eight years for us to get over this and be able to claim that you don’t need to go to Palma to see a good concert. This year we will have Giulietta Venegas, Valeria Castro and Mushka in the pureres, so it’s time to stick out our chests,” he adds. .

However, Roig does not forget that there are precedents that helped define the way, such as Rock’n’rostoll, and stresses the need for this connection to be based on the defense of “contemporary rural Mallorca.” “The line is very good when we talk about folklore,” he explains, “now almost all the tractors work alone, and the men in sackcloth are a thing of the past, and all this could turn the plan into a nature reserve that they pass by tourists and greet us, as happened with neighborhoods like Santa “Catalina, which has become ornery, is troubling.”

“It was never good to be a farmer before.”

However, precisely in San Juan, another initiative was implemented, in the last weekend of April, that combined music and rural life: the Agrivest, a festival designed to claim two branches deeply rooted in the city: agriculture and the cultural aspect, according to Joan Roig himself. , with “a play on words that fits perfectly.” “I think there is a part of society that after Covid began to praise the Zero Kilometer product, when they saw that the world had taken on a devilish speed, and stopped thinking about everything that was closest to them. In Mallorca there are not only urban centers and coastal areas, but there is an inland area that began “It is valued for issues such as sustainability, roots and tradition. It is time to deconstruct our complexity, and this is also why this activity exists: until not so long ago everything in the countryside seemed poor, and it was not good to be a farmer. But fortunately this has changed.” “However, festivals are not the solution to the situation in the countryside. Its recovery depends on everything that farmers have demanded these months: fair prices, not having to rely on subsidies, and rural work being seen like any other job. “In a way, yes, these initiatives can contribute to creating a collective imagination that values ​​more everything that comes from here, whether agricultural products or culture in general,” he concludes.