Criatura took to the “Cerca” stage in the historic center of Loulé on the first day of the MED Festival to shed, unveil and give it all on the stage.
What was visible was its dedication, intensity, and overwhelming passion. When band member, Gil Dionisio, wasn’t fiddling, he was either dancing or giving a fiery discourse at close range or singing. And he would even crawl around like a reptile on the ground.
Edgar Valente, the other more visible face of the band, stepped on stage in ceremonial dance dressed in a skirt playing the square tambourine called adufe, heritage of the Moors. Likewise, he provided vocals and played keyboards.
The Criatura collective, founded in 2016 and made up of ten members, breaks away from known patterns and creates, incidentally, a fresh aesthetic in a continuous search to find new folk music sounds, new mestizaje (musical hybridization), from the roots.
It is theater, song, dance, aplomb, memory, orality, tradition, tension, modernity via progressive rock and symphonic overtones, to cite two musical genres out of the many that the group uses. Criatura is many things. Sometimes its performance is typical of a corporal and conceptual installation.
Criatura provokes, seduces and summons just as it sponsors a dialogue with yesterday and today. In the song “Bem Bonda” (see video) you can see all that arsenal of percussion, bagpipes, cavaquinho, flutes, tambourines hand in hand with contemporary instruments such as electric bass, trumpet, electric guitar and keyboards, among others.
Perhaps it is better to listen to what cannot be explained in words. Perhaps it is even better to see this video attached here to begin to understand them, or perhaps it is pertinent to digest their second album “Bem Bonda” again and again.
Criatura is a new way of approaching the Portuguese musical identity. It is a continuous walk, a crossroads of artistic sensibilities in several lanes and in all directions. Criatura is a breath of fresh air.
Related articles: Jupiter & Okwess at Festival Med, Larger than Life
More about Festival MED: festivalmed.pt/en/
(headline image: Criatura at Festival MED – Photo credit: C.M. Loulé)
Author: Rafael Mieses
