By José Gandue @Gandour Photos by Mauricio Pardo @maofilm
Fran Straube, with his musical project Blond, His presentations in Colombia have helped me confirm several suspicions I'd been whispering about with some reservation. The first of these suspicions is that The music of our times (and those to come) belongs to brave women., They are the ones who want to break all the ridiculous, old rules. They know that today's audience listens to them to be surprised, to be inspired, to break the routine. To find sensuality, intelligence, risk, pain and joy in the same song. Second suspicion: We all want to dance, but at the same time, we don't want the music to make us idiots. We let the music hypnotize us, but we don't want to feel like the formula is repeating itself over and over again. The audience, Contrary to what many "experts" think and emphasize—those who are still on commercial radio or feel like gurus in traditional record label offices, She wants to be shaken by a mixture of fascination and artistic insurrection. The latest suspicion is that masculinity, the excess of testosterone, is already profoundly boring when it comes to searching for new sonic material. We want strength, destruction, anger, rage, but we don't want to continue down the path of contempt and old stigmas. We also want love, without feeling that this desire makes us weak or cowardly.
We've said it several times before: Rubio released one of the best Latin albums of recent times in 2018. Fish It is a collection of small masterpieces, where there is no fear of mixing stigmatized genres without deviating from the path of excellence. In this Chilean artist's music, we can find electro-pop, trip-hop, trap, hip-hop, and other current urban influences, but the process isn't aimed at creating radio hits that disappear in weeks. On the contrary, The seriousness of the process leads to intimate hymns that mark memory and emotion. Therefore, when you go to a Rubio concert (in Bogotá she performed at the Festival Centro, and later at Sanchez Cervecería), you want to feel that, during the approximately one-hour performance, the artist is leading you by the hand through a progressive ecstasy, like someone whispering in your ear, telling you to leave all your reservations at the door and surrender to pleasure without skepticism. As the performance of songs like Coral, Ir, Blue Bird y Invisible beings, We smile, because we're in the artist's territory and she treats us well. The pinnacle awaits us at the end of the journey, with Towards the Bottom y The Plants. That's where everything is dance and delirium.
Rubio is already preparing for bigger stages; it will arrive soon. In the meantime, those who can enjoy his South American tour and upcoming performances during 2020 shouldn't miss his shows. She, Fran, undoubtedly brings, like the bold women of these times, the sounds we hope for to face today's unease.
