Marina Herlop at the Barbican: Taking root and flowering
Marina Herlop in concert. Photo by Luca Howes.
The wilds of Catalonia were brought to the Barbican. London’s brutalist icon had its performing arts auditorium transformed by a concert from Marina Herlop, whose music brims with the scuttling and scurrying of a garden in bloom. Leaving the venue and stepping out into central London’s concrete oasis the fountains in the courtyard gushed a little louder, the greens of the plants looked a little more saturated with chlorophyll and the moisture in the air felt a little more noticeable on your palms. As I made my way back through the building’s dark tunnels, I noticed insects huddled around lamps and pigeons roosting cosily in their nests.
Piera born, Barcelona based, Catalan musician Marina Herlop is classically trained in piano. She performed at London’s Barbican Centre on Friday the 31st of May, her only UK show of the year after recording and releasing her fourth album Nekkuja last November. The album was warmly received by both critics and fans, which drew a lively, well-dressed and multilingual crowd to her show. Bursts of Catalan, Spanish, French and German could be heard throughout the venue before and after her performance.
It is, in part, this multilingualism that characterises Herlop’s music. She oscillates in fragments between birdsong, made-up words - like the album’s title - and Catalan, with lyrics in her native language gliding between catchy refrains and ethereal harmonies. This fluidity and fragmentation was on full display at the Barbican as Herlop weaved between songs on both Nekkuja and her previous project, Pripyat. Aided by her backing singers, the Catalan’s vocals soared with the stage lights at the crescendo of Cosset and slithered through chants in Karada.
Her vocal range is indicative of the absolute control Herlop has over her stage presence; throughout the performance she remained unwavering. It was only small gestures like the arch of her back, or the movement of her fingers at the piano, that gave away the emotional weight that lies under the surface of her music. In the past she has described her songs as sources of tension and power, like a breathing and expanding monster, a tension that she masterfully wields, drumstick in hand and arched over her drum machine, enrapturing the audience as does the conductor of an orchestra. Her theatrical performance was enhanced by her outfit whose centrepiece was a multi-pleated skirt that swished from side to side resembling the petals of a flower or the skin of an insect.
The connection of Herlop’s music to nature and the land is profound and in line with the most prominent works emerging from Catalonia into the Anglophone world. Take for instance Carla Simón’s Berlinale Golden Bear winning film Alcarràs, about a family of peach farmers whose ties to their home contravene the agenda of a changing world. The film examines a rural life, in which family and farm are what ties together the characters. ‘Visca la terra’, translating to bless this land, has become a Catalan rallying cry for the region’s autonomy and fierce independent spirit. This is no better exemplified than in Irene Solà’s novel, Canto jo i la muntanya balla (When I Sing Mountains Dance) a multi-generational story of the Pyrenees and the deep inter-connectedness shared between its human and non-human inhabitants, such as mushrooms, deer and clouds. Lyrical and powerful, Solà joins Simón and Herlop as being the driving forces of the women-led Catalan artistic wave whose core pillar is a deep link with the land.
The Barbican on the night of the concert. Photo credit- Luca Howes.
The project of Nekkuja is abundant in earthiness. Recorded in the interval between finishing and releasing Pripyat, its seven tracks serve as a meditation on nature and an emotional catharsis for Herlop, who had to wait eighteen months for Pripyat to finally get released. The album’s inspiration can be found in gardening ,which Herlop took up in this interval. Birdsong springs up throughout the project, starting with opener Busa, Cosset reaches a euphoric climax as in her show but is grounded by its refrain of cugs cugs (worms worms). Ethereal vocals and running water pair gorgeously in Karada, and both La Alhambra and Reina Mora are explosions that are tempered and controlled by Herlop’s flickering vocals. The album’s closer Babel testifies by its title the connection between Herlop’s music and language and flips the refrain of Busa from Damunt a tu només les flors (above you only flowers) to the wizened Damunt a tu només l’esforç (above you only effort), bringing the album to a reflective end.
Herlop’s set ended with her standing embracing her vocalists and drummer smiling furtively as cheers echoed out from around the room. That night her music slithered its way between our languages and flipped us on to our soft underbellies, growing and blooming to become the applause that filled the Barbican centre.