With a setlist so good it’ll better be your playlist, Macaco revitalised our Monkey year 2016 [referenced to the Chinese calendar] kicking off his “Soy Semilla” tour at Palmanyola’s Son Amar concert venue on Majorca last Friday.
The tour partly named after one of the band’s latest songs “Semilla” (a collaboration with the Mexican artist Lila Downs and Greenpeace) starts with opening the night with lead singer Dani ‘Mono Loco’ Carbonell and his multi-national band comprised of Swedish-born guitar god Tomas ‘Tirtha’ Rundquist, Spanish-guitarist Miki Ramírez, bassist Jules Bikoko, drummer Didak Fernández and Óscar Domínguez on percussion performing that song. With the Mallorquin crowd so enthused about this masterpiece and midway through the gig, Macaco decides to bring on that song one more time, this time round, however, the singer hops into the crowd and celebrates the hymn with his fans. In this moment, each and everyone in the crowd realizes that he and she forms part of the Macaco movement and righteously feels, yeah “Soy Semilla”.
Macaco has a proven track record of being able to simultaneously stimulate and allow values such as strength and unity shine and prevail in people. So were and are the empowering lyrics of “Seguiremos”, the impetus of and for the children during the national awareness and fundraising campaign for child cancer research in collaboration with the Catalan hospital San Joan de Déu back during Christmas 2014. This Friday night in Mallorca, “Seguiremos”, the second song on the setlist, sets the motor behind and the sensation of freedom of the night.
Early into the show, the prominent Catalan songwriter, who started off his career on the Ramblas in Barcelona, recalls lessons of life and he turns to his audience explaining that once it was a friend who was telling him “you know Macaco?” – “Love is the only way”… and the beats intone the next song “Love, love, love”.
The thrill of ecstasy in his fans is vivid already after the third song and is upheld throughout the entire night with his signature songs “Todos”, “Mooving”, “Tengo”, “SOS”, “Rumbo Submarino” or “Volar”.
In between the songs, Macaco opens up to his fans about his parents being musicians and shares even more sources of his inspiration. So, he recites John Lennon’s words that rectified the assumption of the belief “that each one of us is just half of an orange, and that life only makes sense when you find that other half. They did not tell us that we were born as whole, and that no-one in our lives deserve to carry on his back such responsibility of completing what is missing on us” and reasons “if we do not feel and perceive ourselves as complete, we cannot find our better halves”.
An interlude of his unbeatable impros immediately brings back memories of his performances on the Ramblas -now already about two decades ago- and also the experiences lived and marked by his later collaborations with Ojos de Brujo, at that time in everyones’ mouths and ears, initially in and around the cafes and bars of Barcelona’s Fnac on Plaza Catalunya, where these album releases have been handled as top insiders to get your hands on fast. It was then, that these collaborations and elaborations of fusion music were setting a milestone in what the Catalonian capital’s musical landscape was yet to become and certainly is today -not only from its musical perspective. These, together with other sets of influences, bestowed Dani Carbonell his artist name: Macaco El Mono Loco (The Crazy Monkey Macaco).
That night, Macaco closes his show with words of gratitude to everyone who accompanied his path, no matter at which stage they joined him on his movement, especially thanking his “Semillas” and reflects on life one more time that night with “Con la Mano Levantá”. If the atmosphere of the night was to be measured by a curve, there’s one word that’d describe the graph well: peak. A thorough and diverse show with uplifting songs throughout bringing back memories to have that setlist as your playlist even extended. So, Macaco as well extends the show and covers nothing else but the Toots and the Maytals 1969 “Monkey Man” number and we are off our socks.
Text: Ilona Kepic (iK, x)
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