This weekend, Friday 15th and Saturday 16th, Barcelona is hosting the fifth edition of the Cara•B Festival of underground music.
It’s already the fifth edition of the festival…for those who still haven’t been, what is the Cara•B Festival? It is a project which addresses artistic creation linked to music from different perspectives, it has been running for more than five years, and in addition to concerts it also includes screenings, video clip festivals, visual displays and gastronomy.
What does Cara•B refer to? How did the name come about? It is the ethos of the festival. Cara•B has a free vocation, less orthodox than A, it’s fresher, emerging, and because it doesn’t match commercial criteria so much…it’s more transgressive.
Who is it aimed at? Cara•B Festival is a festival based on the freshest current music trends. It isn’t a festival which follows a specific genre on one stage, yet it creates a dialogue between urban scenes, underground, independent, aimed at people who want to collectively enjoy as many musical offerings as they know, and maybe even more intensely, those that they don’t.
Is it difficult to compete with a music festival in Barcelona, given the strong musical offering in the city? Awareness is the currency that we use today. More than competing or not, at the end of the day, it’s about proposing an experience which captures people’s hearts. There is a strong offer, but there is also a lot of demand, so things are balanced out equally.
Have you considered joining other festivals at any point? Yes, and we have already done so in specific projects. B•SUAL, co-produced with the Nrmal Festival in the City of Mexico is the most representative example.
This festival is also an opportunity, a platform for talented young persons, what feedback have you received from them? and from the general public? The artists who have participated in Cara•B have shared very positive feedback with us, as well as the general public, who come back every year, with even higher expectations and intensity than the year before, and the “sold out” sign is always hung up. For more emerging artists it is a platform to perform in front of a very heterogeneous public, an audience who wants to listen and get to know new proposals, and for the public, it is an opportunity to discover them. For the festival, they both represent a challenge to continue improving and growing together every year.
What does talent mean to you? As well as the capacity to create or understand something, talent can be understood as an attitude. A certain attitude in exploring new possibilities from different circumstances, references, journeys or changing contexts, disadvantaged or even implausible, attitude is the origin of innovation, originality and change.
Do you think more similar festivals are needed in Barcelona or in other cities? Have you already considered visiting more cities? With the festival we have already made a soft landing in the City of Mexico and different areas have asked us to do things in different places. For now, we don’t have any specific plans, but there is a time for everything.
