NEW YORK, NY.- In Spanish, ruidosa means noisy, loud, roaring, rumbling and attention-grabbing. The final a makes it a feminine adjective.
Its the name that Francisca Valenzuela, an American-born Chilean songwriter, chose when she decided to create a festival, and an organization, dedicated to getting Latina musicians heard and defying the gender imbalance across the music business. Since 2016, Ruidosa Fests have taken place across Latin America, presenting female-led acts from multiple countries and gathering industry figures for panel discussions and strategic networking.
On Saturday, New York City gets its first Ruidosa Fest, with 10 acts on multiple stages at Lincoln Center, followed by a silent disco DJ set. At 3 p.m., before live music begins at 4:30, journalists and media executives will speak on a panel titled Latinx to the Front: Nuestro Ruido (Our Noise) Is Worldwide. The festival is part of Lincoln Centers Summer for the City series, and the days admission is free.
Ruidosas lineup is filled with genre-stretching musicians: electronic experimenters, pop adepts and songwriters bringing new thoughts to traditional forms.
In a video interview, Valenzuela said she wanted to present artists that have sounds and careers that are very authentic and unique, and you see that theres a point of view.
She added, One of the things we say at Ruidosa all the time is that theres not one way to be a woman. Theres no one way to be successful, or to be Latina identified.
Along with Valenzuela, the festivals headliner is Bebel Gilberto, a Brazilian songwriter who has merged bossa nova with electronics ever since her gravity-defying 2000 album, Tanto Tempo. Her band at Lincoln Center will include Didi Gutman, the keyboardist from Brazilian Girls. After performing her own music for decades, last year Gilberto released João, her versions of songs from her father, the definitive bossa nova musician João Gilberto.
For the Lincoln Center show, were doing a big revision to my old repertoire, Gilberto said in a video interview from Rio de Janeiro. Well be playing some of my old hits and some of the songs from João, along with songs that I know this audience will like to hear on a summer afternoon.
The lineup also includes the Puerto Rican electro-pop duo Buscabulla which means troublemaker whose audience increased exponentially when the Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny collaborated with them on the 2022 track Andrea.
Buscabulla is singer-lyricist Raquel Berrios and producer Luis Alfredo Del Valle, who are married. In the studio, they concoct breezy but pointed songs that infuse electronic production with Puerto Rican rhythms. Buscabullas 2020 album, Regresa (Return), dealt with their choice to move back to Puerto Rico after years in New York; they expect to complete a new album in September. The duo felt fully aligned with Ruidosas mission.
For Latin America, I think that type of platform event is really important, Berrios said. I definitely have had moments where Ive had opportunities to write songs about what it feels to be a girl and some themes surrounding women and Latin culture. There are things that theyre doing that resonate with what we do.
Valenzuela is well known across Latin America, with six albums that have explored a broad array of pop styles, from piano-centered ballads to electro-pop; she has sung about both personal and political topics. Her 2023 album, Adentro (Inside), was filled with songs that coped with heartbreak, bringing raw emotions into close-up.
Valenzuela conceived the Ruidosa Fest during a six-year hiatus between her third and fourth albums, when she was living in Los Angeles, grappling with depression, writing music for TV shows and feeling burnt out a little bit by the music business, she said. Her own independent label, Frantastic, provides financing for Ruidosa.
I was feeling lonely in music, and I was feeling like I didnt understand how other colleagues and friends that I really admire in music were building their careers, she said.
She was inspired, she said, by 1990s examples: the Lilith Fair tours of female-led bands and the riot grrrl movement. I thought it would be a dream to have a space for seeing and recognizing the lack of female-driven projects, onstage and off, she added. And also have it be fun and sexy and appealing and commercial and powerful. And also use it as an excuse to show the issues, whether in the music business with a gender perspective or in the Latin fight for more equality and dignity with womens rights.
The first Ruidosa took place in Santiago, the capital of Chile. Since then, Ruidosa has presented discussions, workshops and music festivals in Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It also makes podcasts: interviews with artists, managers and others with practical insights into the music business.
Paloma Estévez, the director of artistic programming at Lincoln Center who runs the Summer for the City series, worked at the Santiago festival. I liked the idea that women would be noisy, she said. I remember seeing how important this was for the artists entering into a space that was safe, where they could have certain conversations and where they could also perform. I always say making art in Latin America is a miracle, truly, because it is so challenging.
Ruidosa has also gathered data. The organization commissioned a report on how many women had performed at music festivals across Latin America from 2016 to 2018. Soloists and all-female bands amounted to about 10%; mixed bands brought the number only up to less than 25%.
That report spurred legislation in Argentina in 2019 the Mercedes Sosa Law mandating that at least 30% of performers at music festivals would be women. Similar requirements have been proposed in Chile and Uruguay.
It hadnt even occurred to me at the time that there was a possibility to transform this information into action, Valenzuela said. A lot of promoters from the bigger festivals were shocked that they had a 1% or 2% participation of female talent. Theyd be like, Fran, we had no idea. So now theyre beginning to commit to either 30% or 50% and be more aware, and thats been great.
Other performers on Saturday have roots across the Americas. Songwriter iLe emerged from the Puerto Rican group Calle 13 with subtle but charged songs that find the political in the personal. Mireya Ramos, who founded the all-female mariachi band Flor de Toloache, brought out the connections between country and Mexican rancheras on the album Sin Fronteras (Without Borders), and has also dipped into salsa and merengue.
Nella, from Venezuela, brings the nuances of jazz singing to Latin pop; she won the Latin Grammy for best new artist in 2019. Bruses, from Mexico, records Goth-tinged songs in her bedroom that range from skeletal confessions to brash rock. Salt Cathedral, a duo of Colombian musicians based in Brooklyn, devises pointillistic electronic pop. Riobamba is an Ecuadorean-Lithuanian DJ who meshes Latin music with techno, hip-hop and other dance floor styles. And the Mexican American songwriter Renee Goust, in a duo with bassist Khylie Rylo, upends traditional Mexican music for songs like La Cumbia Feminazi.
For Valenzuela, Ruidosa has injected me with a lot of energy and love and connection, she said. When we have these panels or we have a show and were all together, you leave the room with something. And I trust that it helps your individual path and the collective path. Theres a profound sense of discovery. Theres an idea on paper, and then you see it come to life in multiple cities across the world and it makes sense.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
