Rudymentari, Ouineta and Romandre, protagonists of this Saturday's Treu la Llengua

PalmaJoves de Mallorca per la Llengua will once again turn Esporles into a meeting point for music and linguistic advocacy. The organization has presented a new edition of Treu la Llengua, which will take place this Saturday, November 14th, for the second consecutive year, near the Son Quint football pitch. The proposal will bring together six musical performances in Catalan with a format that aims to recover the spirit of popular festivities and demonstrate that the party can also be entirely in our own language.

The seventh edition of Treu la Llengua will feature Al-Mayurqa, PD Místiques, Rudymentari, Ouineta, Romandre, and NYAMI NYAMI. The party will begin at 8:00 PM with a dance hosted by Al-Mayurqa, one of the benchmark groups of traditional Mallorcan music. Afterward, it will be the turn of PD Místiques, who will provide music for the festivities with a DJ set. The program will continue with the reggae of Rudymentari, arriving from Menorca, and, after midnight, with Ouineta, one of the emerging proposals of electronic pop in Catalan. The Felanitx-based group Romandre will take over with a repertoire of covers ranging from pop to ska, while NYAMI NYAMI will be in charge of closing the night.

Treu la Llengua was born as an initiative to demonstrate that festivities in Catalan work and that the language can also be present in the leisure and socialization spaces of young people. Two years ago, the organization reformulated the event's format so that municipal popular festivals could take it as an example. "Treu la Llengua mirrors a popular festival with a format entirely in Catalan," explained the organization's spokesperson, Josep Buades.

A catalog of nearly 90 artists for town halls

The presentation of the new edition also served to announce a tool with which Joves de Mallorca per la Llengua aims to facilitate the presence of music in Catalan at municipal festivals: a catalog with nearly 90 artists, groups, and DJs that the organization will send to the town councils of Mallorca and will also publish on its website.

The collection was created through a participatory process via social media, in which nearly a hundred musical proposals were registered. The catalog includes both emerging artists and established professionals and aims to showcase the diversity of the music scene in Catalan, in addition to facilitating their booking for local festivals and other popular celebrations.

The initiative is part of the campaign that the organization launched two years ago to ensure that at least half of the performances at municipal festivals are entirely in Catalan. At that time, Joves de Mallorca per la Llengua (Youth of Mallorca for the Language) promoted an agreement with eight political parties and about thirty town councils to advance this commitment. Now, the organization has warned that it will monitor the compliance of the agreements by the municipalities that joined and will verify that the commitment is respected. At the same time, Buades has invited the rest of the town councils in Mallorca to join the initiative.

Joves de Mallorca per la Llengua argues that music and culture are a gateway to the language and that Catalan must have a presence in all meeting spaces, including parties and youth leisure spots. In this sense, Buades has defined 'Treu la Llengua' as a space for celebration and advocacy: "It aims to be this: a meeting point, a space where one can have a good time and, at the same time, a place to advocate for our language. It is fun and celebration, and also struggle and advocacy. Building a future by partying, and building community and country".