Guieldu at II Semando Fest

Oviedo

We shared the stage with poetic Asturian traditional singing, punk-rock, and Asturianist hip-hop.

On Feb­ru­ary 9, 2024, we per­formed at Lata de Zinc venue in Oviedo (Uviéu) as part of the 2^nd Seman­do Fest. It was our first con­cert of the year, and also one of the most spe­cial, as the cause cham­pi­oned by this fes­ti­val goes far beyond just music.

Asturi­an is a ful­ly fledged lan­guage with its own gram­mar, a Lan­guage Acad­e­my, a vibrant lit­er­ary tra­di­tion, and over 600,000 speak­ers across the region. How­ev­er, it lacks offi­cial sta­tus, leav­ing it at a dis­ad­van­tage com­pared to oth­er region­al lan­guages in Spain (such as Cata­lan, Gali­cian, Basque, or Valen­cian) that enjoy co-offi­cial legal sta­tus in their respec­tive autonomous com­mu­ni­ties. When we pub­lish our music on dig­i­tal stream­ing plat­forms, there is no lin­guis­tic cat­e­go­ry for Asturi­an, unlike oth­er co-offi­cial lan­guages. Social media plat­forms do not offer auto­mat­ic trans­la­tion from Asturi­an into oth­er lan­guages either, forc­ing the use of Span­ish. Fur­ther­more, in pub­lic fund­ing calls or nation­al music con­tests in Spain, the phras­ing «state lan­guages» is almost always used, yet Asturi­an remains exclud­ed from this list.

That is why a lan­guage like this is not pre­served in dusty books: it is pre­served by liv­ing it every day — at the super­mar­ket, the bank, on tele­vi­sion, and, of course, through music. And that is pre­cise­ly the core mis­sion of Seman­do Fest.

Orga­nized by Musicasturiana.com and Ixuxú Cul­tura, the 2^nd Seman­do Fest took place at Lata de Zinc venue in Oviedo. This fes­ti­val serves as a show­case for the young Asturi­an music scene per­form­ing in Asturi­an across all gen­res. The evening opened with San­dra Álvarez and Noemí González, who blend­ed Asturi­an tra­di­tion­al singing (*tona­da*) with fem­i­nist poet­ry into a cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mance. Next, Mostru l’Hor­ru took the stage with con­scious hip-hop and sharp lyri­cism. Then it was our turn to per­form, before hand­ing over to Ocho­bre, whose Asturi­an­ist punk-rock trig­gered the expect­ed pogo. In fact, they invit­ed our band­mate Jorge to join them on stage to play a song on the banjo.

Tick­ets had com­plete­ly sold out days in advance, so we played to a packed house. We had pre­pared an intense set fea­tur­ing the most ener­getic songs in our reper­toire; the con­nec­tion with the audi­ence was absolute, even if the stage space was a bit tight for all of us.

Although the fea­tured acts belong to the younger gen­er­a­tion, the crowd gath­ered at Lata de Zinc brought togeth­er peo­ple of all ages. Beyond urban gen­res, rock sounds con­tin­ue to res­onate strong­ly with adults, and that was evi­dent that night. From the stage, the con­trast was strik­ing: old­er atten­dees at the back enjoyed the show at a relaxed pace, while the younger crowd right up front gave it their all.

Even though a large part of our music is instru­men­tal, we also have vocal tracks, most­ly in Asturi­an. Not only because it is the lan­guage of our land and of the tra­di­tion­al music that inspires us, but also because singing in Asturi­an means singing in the lan­guage we feel as our own and that shapes our iden­ti­ty. And just like oth­er minor­i­ty lan­guages, it pos­sess­es a unique musicality.

We thor­ough­ly enjoyed the night, the per­for­mances by the oth­er bands, and above all, the mes­sage and com­mit­ment dri­ving Seman­do Fest.

Concert video and photos

© Pho­tos: Leti­cia Cernuda