As the philosopher Ernst Cassirer points out, we are symbolic animals and what we understand by cultural traditions are catalogues and manuals of behaviour constructed on the basis of symbols and they mark, on many occasions, how we see the world and how we see ourselves.

The music of the son is intimately linked to the message of the text, it speaks to us of experiences of legends, of stories that belong to the collective memory of communities and women are, on many occasions, represented in these lyrics through archetypes and characters full of clichés and corseted in forms of behaviour.

This spectacle brings together different songs that portray different archetypes of women, which could reconstruct the biography of our grandmothers and mothers: What is expected of a woman at the age of 20, what happens when she gets married, and if she doesn’t get married…? The choices of many women in the Iberian territory, the shortcomings, the longings, the prohibitions are portrayed in this corpus of knowledge that make up our musical tradition.

Symbolisation as a shape

Vigüela is a group with a long and strong link to tradition, their many years of research into singing, their styles and manners make them an international reference. They live tradition not as an artistic challenge but as a daily action, integrated in their day to day life.

Patricia Álvarez is a dancer specialised in traditional dances and folklore of the Mediterranean area, from a contemporary vision of dance that distances her from specific languages, although she relies on this corpus of traditional and folkloric information to navigate the performing arts.

All of them are united by this interest in the tradition that goes beyond the artistic fact, how the tradition is integrated in our subconscious, the experience itself that is linked to forms of expression through voices, sound or the body. Those symbols that take shape through music and dance.

How can we women continue to enjoy tradition despite the message and the narrative it constructs about us?