One of the black holes of Catalan is its use in urban environments. Rap has a large representation of artists in Spanish, but there are few in Catalan. And there is not much female presence either. These are two of the objectives that the Perifèria Gold Battle project, promoted by the Llobregat Block Party Cultural Association, intends to normalize.
Today Saturday, at 6 p.m., in the Espai Jove La Bàscula, in the Zona Franca of Barcelona, there will be a free-style cockfighting exhibition in Catalan. With Markus FM as facilitator and Albert Alarcón from DJ, from the Raplegats collective, four rappers, Yung Rovelló, Dafer, Zoyert and Marina Bou, will star in this unique battle, in the Peripheria Gold Battle session.
Zoyert will premiere today in Catalan: “I don't prepare anything, but the performance depends a lot on how you are that day. Normally I rap in a kind of Spanglish, let's see how the experience goes.
Markus FM has been rapping in Catalan for eight years now. With the project promoted by Alarcón, they want to make the use of Catalan grow in this world. "The Raplegats meetings began in December 2021 with a dozen people and now we are thirty."
The project also wants to promote the female presence, "with couples of different genders, because it is a masculinized world," says Alarcón. We have to achieve the professionalization of the girls. The Gold Battle is respected and, with Red Bull, it is the oldest in Spain, from 2010. Now we want to create a free-style scene in Catalan”.
If the seed that they plant today germinates, a seed that has fertilized well, Alarcón is hopeful that the first battle in Catalan will be held in autumn and the first league will arrive in 2024 if there are more sponsors: “I want to insist on this need, to act in suitable places”.
For now, the proposal presented today received the Lluís Carulla 2022 award for the best idea. The director of the Fundació Carulla, Marta Esteve, declares that the award wants to support the three challenges of the project: "Find spaces for cultural creation for young people, incorporate girls into rap and promote the use of Catalan in urban music."
“It seems as if Catalan was only good for formal uses and that we can't play. It can be done with rap as it has always been done with gloss ”, she concludes.
Catalan version, here
