He folds and does so with a farewell concert at the Lluís Companys stadium, selling out tickets in twenty-one minutes and with queues of more than 100,000 buyers. An unusual event in the panorama of the , and a bittersweet end to an entire era. The figures make his legacy undeniable, but also the void that will be left in the Catalan stage circuit. After years of effervescence in the music press, new formats on television and the strengthening of labels, awards and festivals, the question arises: who will make Catalonia sing like it has done?
Oques Grasses was born in the midst of the expansion of pop and pop-rock: The Amics de les Arts sounded everywhere with Jean-LucMishima consolidated with the already emblematic Order and Adventureand Manel was about to pull out 10 miles to see good armoraiming to be the group of the decade. At the same time, what later became known as trumpet groups and fiesta major began to sound: La Pegatina, Gertrudis and Búhos bet on the festive mix of ska, rumba and reggae, and, a couple of years later, Txarango would become a reference in the genre, with political and optimistic lyrics, pitos i oioiois. Perhaps, the transversality of Oques Grasses comes from not completely fitting into any of these waves and, at the same time, from being their heirs. Oques Grasses captures the optimistic festivity, but also the sensitivity of totems like Els Pets. A sincere sentimentality, which is not cumbersome or imposed, and which not only invites you to listen to it, but makes you sing it.
A second date at the Lluís Companys stadium sold out in nineteen minutes confirms that the music of Oques Grasses appeals in an almost intergenerational way, that it is not the sound of a moment, but of a people. Disc after disc, the group has incorporated new sounds and musical trends, as well as scene names, but there is one identity that lives on. The well-found melody, singable, inviting, an optimistic melange of Life is beautiful, but complicated; lyrics that know how to make the universal, collective self of verse and music a celebration.
On their networks, the Osonencs explained that they started as a group of friends and today they stop to end up as a group of friends as well. Perhaps, the key is in the accident. More and more, the music circuits condition the format of the proposals, and the proposals make the artists mutate. The dissolution of the fabric of small-format venues leaves an entire musical genre without a stage, which now has less space to flourish than twenty years ago, and the growing dominance of festivals as a dominant musical space means that it begins to bet almost exclusively on the concert-show of great production. This is why, just as Oques Grasses did, today we are fascinated by groups like El Remei de Ca la Fresca, Alosa or , proposals that precisely, in one way or another, play against it. Perhaps, rather than asking ourselves who will occupy the space of Oques Grasses, we also need to start paying attention to what space we leave for new things to grow.
