Live Review: Nathy Peluso
In our era of youtube and soundcloud-led music industry, it is not a surprise to see artists that would have seldom dreamt of making a career out of music suddenly emerge as if from a vacuum and, within months, get to pay their mums’ rent while touring foreign countries. There is more than one recipe to conjure the magic potion that brings these blessed-by-the-internet kids a wealth of views and hype. Each of them has hit the sweet spot with a good alchemy of ingredients, which include but are not limited to: rarity, quality, aesthetics, wave-riding, sex appeal, identity or genre-crossing. Ultimately, it comes down to a balance of either talent or wit, and or luck. But while in the UK the musical spectrum for these kind of success stories is wide – Cosmo Pyke, Mura Masa and Nadia Rose are all very distant sonically – in Spain it has come to be almost exclusively dominated by (what might be called) urban music: hip-hop, dancehall and reggaeton.
This is not necessarily a negative feature, as urban music, by being one of the least elitist and conservative spaces, tends to give more leeway for intersectional and experimental journeys. In fact, this Spanish subculture that is on its way to assault the mainstream has become most interesting for its integration of the rich variety found in the Spanish language diaspora: self-made artists in the peninsula are importing the sounds of the Latin-American continent and mingling them with autochthonous flamenco, north-American trap and Nordic vaporwave. And it is precisely because of this that some of them have achieved an outlook that is original enough to be exportable. Also, another fact to be celebrated is the increasing appearance of strong female personas, which has been significant in the past year.
Nathy Peluso, who performed the past Tuesday at the Hoxton Square, is one of the best examples of this. Working with the Canarian collective Craneomedia, in 2017 she assaulted the scene with work of unusual consistent quality for an amateur, rapidly gaining a spot as one of Spain’s hottest upcoming artists – in fact, her European tour this January marks her as one of the very few to make it to non-Hispanic audiences.
As is the case with many young independent artists, her creative output comes in the form of singles accompanied of videos rather than well-planned albums (the recently released album Esmeralda is mostly a compilation of her already-released best tracks). Watch any of her clips and you’ll become immediately hooked by her great charisma and originality. The videos are highly curated: each of the clips develops like a short film which points to a specific aesthetic statement. The ability of Peluso to move seamlessly between different aesthetic codes and still look natural creeds the multiplicity of influences that build her imagery (Latin American folklore, Canarian weather, tropic landscapes, millennial tech nostalgia and mid-century jazz, to name a few). Her sound on the other hand, is less disperse: it moves between 90s hip-hop and 2010s cloudrap, reminiscent of the likes of Lauryn Hill and Doja Cat. The most gratifying surprise however is found in her lyrics, complex wordplays and elaborated metaphors elevate her songs to a status of poetry (a rare feature amongst her congeners), and not because of this becoming less danceable.
I got to the Hoxton Square about an hour earlier of the official start of the show, with hopes I could find Nathy and get to interview her. It didn’t happen unfortunately, it seems she had left the venue after the sound check, for she walked in through the main door just fifteen minutes prior to appearing on stage, hastily as if avoiding paparazzi flashes, sunglasses and fur coat on. The venue in currently-hip Hoxton is rather small as you will know if you have been. There were about seventy people in the room, and although the fashion garms of the audience gave the vibe that you were in any random artsy event full with UAL students, one minute in and you already knew almost everyone was Spanish. Although not a surprise, I had hopes that some non-Spanish youth showed up for the gig. I get some mixed feelings with this kind of situation. On one hand I celebrate that us young emigrates are still in tune with the creative avant-garde of the country we’ve left behind and have the time and change to support it, not being engulfed by the hardships of the metropolis’ life; on the other, I can’t help feeling that the presence of the artist in London does not mean she has transcended the national and language barrier, but that the immigration of Spanish youth of talent and good taste is large enoughfor events to be organized targeting us as a collective.
Nathy’s music however does transcend many of the barriers of mainstream culture. She is a girl fearlessly assaulting the male-dominated scene of urban music: a true feminist act, but she does not have a feminist discourse (which others like Princess Nokia have exploited to the point of exhaustion). In fact when she is inevitably asked about feminism in interviews, she shakes it off by saying she does not consider issues of gender in her creative process, and acts only according to her swinging mood; she can be petty and tough, romantic and dry, androgynous and feminine, diva and ghetto princess. These mood swings show in the highly elaborated visuals that accompany the few tracks she’s put out. She might appear playing with snakes in a desert, laying among tropical fruit while chewing pizza, or smoking a blunt with gel nails. Sonically she is perhaps least disperse, as her yet scarce work does not move beyond the realm of hip-hop, although it does cover the wider spectre in the genre: from 808’s, snares and faded out synth chords with melodic hooks to more classic boombap and 90s style mcying.
What is most eye (and ear) catching is that it all seems unabatedly natural and not some premediated catch-all posse. As she has explained before, she is channelling in her art the wealth of influences that make up her imagery. From little, she has been feeding off many disparate cultural inputs: Argentinian rock, tango, and all the other folkloric genres of Latin America during her childhood, combined with the quality records inherited from her parents (e.g. Nina Simone or Chet Baker), then moving to Spain, Spanish folklore (flamenco, rumba) along with the contemporary hype urban music has seen in this latter country. Hers is thus a story of migrations, not only cultural and aesthetical but also physical, which she has transformed into a nomadic pride that lets her journey and experiment in whatever genre she feels like trying, and it is all impressively well-executed.
All of this was blissfully transported on stage the other night –another of her breaks with what is usual as of late in underground music: her live performances are equally if not more enthralling that her studio records, a rare feature amongst artists these days. After a couple warm-up tunes played by her DJ and boyfriend Peter Party, she appeared with the most extravagant look and immediately made the rest of us feel basic with our outfits. A Gucci-like v-shaped top, pink silk pants, pink fluffy hoop earrings and wide medium heels. It was clear early on that despite the seemingly aggressive empowering quality of her studio tracks, what Nathy seeks mostly is for people to have a good time dancing along with her. She didn’t stop at going through her scant discography, and did indeed expand to covers of bachata, bossa and rumba – she has in fact mentioned how it is likely she will pursue these kind of styles rather than sticking to hip-hop in the future.
As said, one of her best features is versatility, which she clearly demonstrated: dancing salsa sensually then gesturing aggressively, or singing melodically without missing a note and rapping with monotonous voice. The presence of her rather shy DJ was almost unnoticeable as Nathy put on an entirely one-man show. It was a solid package, the meagre £8 we paid were definitely well-worth it . The experience of her concert is not one that leaves you thinking about the importance of the symbolic disposition that has been put up in the odd hour the show lasts, but rather that you just enjoyed yourself and have been infected by her raw energy. She has in fact an attitude that tends more to joking and putting up a funny persona rather than taking herself seriously, which is likeable but at the same time it would be cool for her to be a bit more badass - which she could definitely afford, maybe it’s just not in her nature. Since her come-up has been very quick, it is hard to tell whether her success will last or if she will be up to the task of consistently delivering good content in the future. If she does, she will deserve some non-Spanish speaking audience next time she comes to London, and maybe a larger venue.