Women Taking Risks & the Future of Music in Spain (Part 3/3)
Bad Gyal has a long time love for Jamaican culture, specifically dancehall, and has used the Afro-Caribbean beats she heard in the Barcelona clubs she used to sneak into as a teen as the driving beat for her brand of dance-centered, multilingual tracks. She has been steadily releasing music for the past few years, with the aid of a number of producers, including Dubbel Dutch, Fakeguido, El Guincho, and LOWLIGHT.
When she achieved her dream of going to Jamaica and working with local artists and choreographers last year, resulting in the track “Unknown Feeling” with Qraig Voicemail, she realized it was just a jumping off point in her music career. Although Spanish media has named her “the Queen of Dancehall,” in an interview with El Bloque she said, “It’s hard even for me to define my sound,” because it incorporates a variety of influences, like reggaeton, hip hop, trap, and electronic music, in addition to Jamaican dancehall, all centered on beats, movement, and energy.
La Zowi
Born in Paris but raised throughout Spain, La Zowi draws on the influences of urban music to produce her highly electronic and distorted trap pop. La Zowi’s brash lyrics and image give the impression that she really doesn’t care what you think about her. The stylized distortion extends to her interpretation of hip hop and trap in general, twisting genre conventions to produce an underground sound with the subject matter of gender politics and social class.
Buika
Born on the Spanish island of Palma de Mallorca to parents from Equatorial Guinea, Concha Buika has been involved in creative work for years, releasing albums, writing novels and series of poetry, performing operas, mastering multiple instruments, and giving her raw, flamenco-jazz vocals to both global collaborations and her own solo works. Her music is an uncompromising exploration of self, translated through her emotional voice and lyrics that feel at home in an orchestra, a jazz band, or piercing the room accompanied only by a cajon.
Ms Nina
Originally from Argentina, but living in Spain, Ms Nina first crossed my path on a Remezcla feature two years ago, when she was starting to make music full time. Fast forward to the present, and she’s produced a string of successful singles, collaborated with international artists, and become a name to know in the Spanish music scene as a pioneer in the internet-driven subgenre of reggaeton, “neoperreo.” Her wild, femme-centric tracks take all the dance filth of perreo (street/club dance-music blend from the early 2000s; for context, remezcla), pushed through the filter of Ms Nina’s progressive perspective, to deliver a fresh flip of the gender norms in the genre and an extrapolation of self love and confidence.
Paula Cendejas
Paula Cendejas, who has broken into the Spanish pop charts and been the center of a splash of media attention (here in Noisey and independent magazine NEO2), has orchestrated her own come up via Youtube and Instagram, recording covers of hit songs by both Spanish and English language artists. A career made for the digital age, Paula has linked her online persona with the musical direction of Alizzz, a producer attached to big names in Spanish hip hop and pop, whose partnership with Warner Records Spain, Whoa! Music, now represents Paula’s sound.
With the views on her videos in the hundreds of thousands, she’s in a good place to release her first single, “Sal de mi cabeza,” a glittery electropop track with an Afro-beat, following her feature on the track “Tu cama” by Spanish-language R&B artist Jesse Baez.
Originally published at www.theintersection.co.
