Music without Labels XIX
Queen´s grandiloquence
Mediterranean blues by Namina
Urban-roots by Pó Girl
Glam rock V: Queen
Queen was an ambiguous band who, by mixing all types of trends and further pushing and riding the bisexual and glamorous wave, knew how to hold its spot among the main attractions of rock. Despite the negative reviews by music magazines.
They formed at the peak of the glam rock era, but the producer Roy Thomas Baker buried them under the pompous structure of the business. After his death, in 1991, Freddy Mercury became a legend and the rest of the band went their separate ways.
Queen - Keep Yourself Alive (1973)
This track was composed by Brian May, and opened their first album, Queen. Which surprised the public with cutting guitar sounds, blunt rhythms and an unusual classical polyphonic choir voice with no synthesizers.
In 1970, guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor, member of the band Smile spotted the eccentric singer Farrokh Bulsara and the bassist John Deacon. Under the name Queen they produced their first album which received good reviews but went unnoticed. Reoriented by their record label, they recorded a series of albums which granted them international success. They adapted to the trends of the time and focused on the formulae of hymn songs, that is epic songs which were simple and easily identifiable.
National: Namina
Namina is a singer-songwriter from Catalunya. She’s characterised by her eclecticism, in both her stylistic references and for her use of different languages in her compositions, transitioning from one to another seamlessly.
This eclecticism translates in a very specific way of making music, with a signature style and voice, which the author baptised: Mediterranean tropical auteur rock-blues. In it, there even was space for poetry.
Namina - M'he fet una esquerda a la clofolla (2019)
This track authored by herself was released as a preview for her third album, Ens endurem el ven. It stands out for her careful words and because of a dark pop sound.
At the age of thirteen Natalia Miró do Nascimento taught herself to make songs. Two years later she started her first project and she didn’t stop playing and singing ever since. Her two albums, Orlando (2014) and Ígnia (2016), and 162 concerts in different formats brought her to perform on stages such as the Festival Músicas Sensible (Liceo), Cambrils’ Jazz Festival and Girona’s Black Music Festival. In 2019 she presented Ens endurem el ven, a work where she explores new sounds and formats.
International: Po' Girl
Po' Girl is a Canadian band which aims to recover and update North America’s traditional music. The band formed in 2003, by the prestigious multi-instrumentalists Trish Klein and Allison Russel.
Their music, which uses a wide variety of instruments such as the banjo, the clarinet, the harmonica, the dobro, the accordion and the gutbucket bass, has been compared to that of artists such as The Band, Hazel Dickens, Tracy Chapman and Elizabeth Cotten.
Po´ Girl – Go On and Pass Me By (2007)
This track, composed by Awna Teixeira and released in their third album Home to You, shows their style, called urban roots, which mixes genres like folk, country and jazz.
Po’ Girl released their homonymous debut album in 2003. A year later they published their second album Vagabond Lullabies, which included tracks with other musicians from the strong Canadian indie-folk music scene. After their first album Home to You tour, Trish Klein started a renowned career as a music producer and the band reformed with new members. The transformed band released works such as Deer in the Night and Unreleased (both in 2008), Live (2009) and Follow Your Bliss (2010).