The 220,000 tickets on sale for the farewell of Oques Grasses, which will have four episodes at the Olympic Stadium on 5, 7, 9 and 10 October next year, have flown at the speed of light. Now, in hindsight, this enormous and unexpected success is also easily explained. Before you could only venture out. When in 2015 Oques Grasses presented their second album at the tiny Heliogàbal in Barcelona Say-n’hi com vulguiswe could already see a band that, if it was not substantially different from the other projects – with its fusion based on reggae, Mediterranean folk and pop -, had lyrics that showed another gaze, direct and tender, of sensitive naivety. But it’s a long road from there to filling four stadiums. Along the way, Josep Montero’s band has accentuated its personality, the sound has evolved with the adaptation of an expansive electronic music that has something universal, and if it were not for the fact that peripheral languages are ignored in Spain, it could triumph in a gaztetxe at Rentería and at the Casillas de Berlanga parties. But where the de facto kings are found is in Catalonia. Everything now. Four stages at once, like Coldplay. Not even the Boss. As public as in a Primavera Sound. The group’s impact is unprecedented. And in Catalan, when the language seems to languish in society.
Its consolidation has brought the reign of Catalan pop back to the hinterland of Catalonia, since after the referential years of Manel or Mishima, groups read with elaborate proposals that do not have dance as their center of gravity, Oques Grasses, quite definitive rural name, appeal to simplicity, not simplicity. Texts that question the madness of the times, offering hope without discouragement: “Tota la micia d’aquest món l’enterraré / I believe that the pau a sobre els fems“they sing Terraces. Hippies? Nor because in this optimal interval for the elevation towards utopia a choir is added that shouts “fuck it all“It’s not traditionalism, but a way of saying that despite everything there are ways out, there is self-esteem, there is a power of which one is aware, a cut of the sleeves under the umbrella that protects, imbued with music. Montero himself said it to this newspaper three years ago “humanity is rotten, but we need hope, good things also happen. “That’s how I am.”
In this sense, the Oques Grasses are a generational group, those born when Mishima and Manel were taking their first steps, those who like passports to illusion without hieroglyphics. The fact that they then expanded their base with more generations and audiences does not prevent young people from feeling them as their own. Because they too have grown tired of being silent victims in an unwanted world that Oques describes in the same song.pau dels cargols is the new religion“The lungs are used to breathe, even to scream. “We could not have been as we are if we had been born in Barcelona, nor Manel if we had been born in Osona,” Josep Montero told this newspaper in the same interview.
Starting from a festive and fusion sound imagery, recently coined by Txarango (Girona) or La Pegatina (Montcada i Reixach) and before by Color Humano (Paris-Barcelona) or Dusminguet (La Garriga), Oques Grasses are a dance and party band, harmonically and rhythmically friendly, without formal requirements. Their big step was to bring this sound, initially of a traditional group with instruments and acoustic substrate, into the realms of electronics, a frank language among the new generations who are no longer faithful only to the acoustic guitar because David Guetta is also in their playlists. The world has become smaller, prejudices are dissolving in this globalized chaos where no one asks what sound sounds like if what sounds good. But the competence of musicians like those of Oques, trained in music schools typical of a society that is beginning to understand that studying music is not a waste of time reserved only for recalcitrant bohemians and future unemployed, matters a lot. Today we know that it is desirable to study to become a musician, not as essential as a law degree to be a lawyer, but to play well, like Oques Grasses, or invent new commercials, like Rosalía.
But the quality of the songs, the suitability of the lyrics, the typical naturalness of a group without glamor and an excellent and protean live performance do not fully explain its driving force, supported by a Catalan which is not a barrier but rather the cohesion and language of those who will sing it on the four stages. Stadiums. Concerts. This is another key, the great change, the new social, cultural and economic context. We consume a lot of live music in large venues. Almost vehemently. That’s where we spend our budget, the event where we fully assert ourselves. If, as happened, it is also announced as the last chance to see the Osona team live and the ticket price is reasonable, the desire increases a hundredfold. Even the fear of being excluded. No one wants to say no when asked one day: Were you there? Then there is resale in an uncontrolled sector, which allows speculators to acquire places that they immediately resell at double the price. The announcement of the two new stadiums put up for sale and filled today has partially ruined the plans, but resale remains an unsolved problem. And, without taking anything away from the Oques Grasses, who earned paradise on their own merits, thanks to the vision and determination of an electrician who wanted to become a musician, the enthronement of the great concert helped a lot. So much so that Josep may not be able to realize the dream of three years ago, when he said “I would like to retire at 42 and make songs for fun, have animals, a garden, a well, few expenses”. Will he understand? He is 40 years old.
