Getting to know Le Nais: Catalan artist making her Primavera Sound debut

Le Nais, born in the countryside town of Balaguer, is an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who is making her much-anticipated debut at Primavera Sound music festival on Friday.

However, this performance is extremely significant, as she has had to wait two years for this day, after Primavera was cancelled for two consecutive years owing to the pandemic.

“I’ve been waiting for next week for two years”, she told Catalan News. Even playing at the festival at all is still somewhat surreal for her, being “something that [she] never thought [she] could do”, adding that she has “been wanting to do it for forever.”

A musician from a young age

Her passion for music and performing stretches far beyond that, as from the age of eight she has been interested in the medium, going to a music school in which she was forced to play the violin, however negotiating her way to getting fortnightly guitar lessons.

Later on, in 2017, she began writing music, because, as she told Catalan News, she “had the urge to put a lot of things onto paper”.

Two years later, she signed with Luup records, which gives Catalan artists a platform to grow from. She describes the network of artists that make up the record label, such as The Tyets or Ariox, as “like a little family”, adding that they “support each other a lot.”

Like many artists, however, the pandemic derailed her career, and she struggled to find the motivation to write. Another major event in her life that affected her as a writer was a particularly hard breakup, however through her writing, which she viewed as a cathartic way to express her pain, she “had the urge to say all these things”, which in turn “brought [her] to where she is now.”

Musical inspiration

Naida told Catalan News that she prefers to carry around a notebook to write down any spontaneous creative thought that comes to her on the metro, the bus, or on her bike, as “phones can die and disappear”, however it’s important to take a note of an idea as soon as you think of it because “some ideas just have that moment in your life and they never come back.”

These ideas then sometimes gain traction and develop into full gentle but powerful songs, many of which focus on the themes of relationships and feminism.

One of these is ‘Revolution’, which came about following a series of misogynistic comments directed towards her on a particular day. As a result, her desire to “shout” about all this inequality, the song was written in just 20 minutes.

Le Nais is playing on June 3 at 6:45pm at Primavera Sound, as well as other venues in Catalonia throughout the summer. More information can be found on her website, as well as that of Luup Records.