La Mona de Sandra Monfort

The Valencian artist Sandra Monfort is synonymous with tradition, folk, and exploration, but also with avant-garde and experimentation. In her debut album “Niño Reptil Angel,” she traversed tradition through the caress of electronics and poetry. Now she presents “La Mona,” a second album where she offers a resounding sonic evolution that reaffirms her transformative ability and demonstrates that at this stage, it’s difficult to find an artist as complete as her. In “La Mona,” Sandra Monfort explores the intersection of folk music and 80s pop. An exercise in synchronized swimming between electronica and popular culture. With arrangements featuring Valencian band instruments, percussion, 80s synthesizers, vigorous guitars, and her voice—sometimes tender and at other times confident and unwavering—she weaves the songs together to create a unique universe steeped in poetry and dance.

The artist sings in her mother tongue with such a everyday and genuine tone that it’s impossible not to be transported to a space brimming with life and the collective spirit of the Valencian people—its streets, its festivals, its desires, its laments. “La Mona” moves between pasodobles, bachatas, boleros, ballads, and other folk genres sung in Valencian, all combined with contemporary sounds. Sandra Monfort tackles sensitive topics such as suicide, motherhood, patriarchy, love, sex, death, gender violence, and pain, with a luminous and hopeful tone. She becomes the artisan society needs to awaken, to avoid giving up entirely, to mobilize and sensitize, to unite and coalesce. A breath of fresh air, a healing dance, a deep breath.