On these dates of abundant music festivals, you don’t have to look hard to find locals from Granada dotting any poster. Well of talent for so long, today, after more than a decade of continuous bustle, The essence of Granada permeates urban music with almost countless references. Two of these, or three, you see, were among the dozen proposals presented on the second day of the Share Festival, held in the Parc del Fòrum and closed by the controversial Sevillian rag-picker JC Reyes.
The reborn Maka stood out (before him, a man from Granada, J Abecia, had already performed), a man saved by music from a murky life after paying to get muddy, a phenomenon that fills a Palau Sant Jordi without having to do half a TikTok or play on the radio or appear on television. The one from Polígono Norte Almanjáyar, flamenco with the soul of a rapper, showed his fusion of the music that runs through his veins with black rhythms, a formula that has made him the idol of the many who seek hope in his songs. Below are some banners that he had in the audience: “Dreams come true & rdquor ;; “Maka is therapy.” Please do not understand that the artist is a cheap guru, but rather someone who has hit rock bottom, already coming from very low, and who shares his life, what he has overcome. And an artist with a lot, a lot of love song, like the catchy bailonga ‘Cositas del amor’, which sounded at the most festive moment of the day. The therapy that the banner referred to is also the one that involves tickling and foot movement.
The man from Granada, accompanied by four dancers and backup singers with duende at the beginning, began with some of his songs in which the bass drum resounds to bring him closer to reggaeton, such as ‘Te comía’ or ‘Todo lie’. There was only one mistake. “It’s been a long time since I played during the day, what a strange thing and how not very flamenco”Maka said around 8 p.m.
The Latin fusion drums disappeared while the stage was filled with instruments – guitars, drums, keyboard… – to turn the Fòrum, last night with 15,000 attendees, into a giant square with its most flamenco pieces driven by clapping. Message announced with the sound of ‘El aire’ and two flags of Andalusia waved by two dancers. A flamenco uproar sustained until the end.
A scream of rage
They don’t even deceive in the warm-up, still hidden at the back of the stage, Ajax and Prok, twins from Albaicín, when They scream of rage and its echo scares those who are waiting for their DJ, Blasfem, to play the first track near the speakers. They’re not lying either when this starts, with ‘DTS’: “We are the stronghold of the Gauls; we are the product of bad times”. Or, in the words of Ajax, “two unfortunate people who left the Albaicín.” Their songs are street stories with substance, but, above all, protest and denunciation – they had a memory for Palestine and Ukraine – shared with viscerality and an aggressiveness that costs them more than a scratch when one raps in front of the other. If, from Granada, Maka was in charge of imbuing the flamenco aroma and hope, Ajax and Prok could not – in fact, do not know how – do anything other than shake the heads of the young and festive audience that the Share Festival attracts.
