Lua de Santana joins Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso for Madrid showcase celebrating the return of close-up performance

Taking place in an industrialised sector of the city, the midday sun was unforgiving as ticketed fans formed a queue from the mid-morning raiding a nearby fleet of commercial waste bins for cardboard and other items that make suitable shade, is a quick reminder of this event's real purpose - bringing the diehards to a place where they can freely (in both senses of the word) celebrate music they love.

Lua de Santana is of the new school of Latin artists who are taking the idea of genre and treating it with a natural fusion packed with flavourful gusto, alongside the likes of Nathy Peluso – who guested on 2024's Grasa – and tonight’s headliners, by fusing the contemporary with the classic in abrasive and unapologetic fashion.

The collaboration between the two brands has come about to bring back the intimacy of live shows – and while tonight’s venue, Autocine, which has been repurposed from drive-in cinema to venue with a large indoor tent decked out with bars and two stages – one for support, and one for headliner – isn't exactly a sweatbox pub where the artists retinas are visible from four paces – the concept brings the larger than life sounds under an unclosed roof and the palpitating heat does the rest.

Santana sits coolly opposite me in a buzzing and crowded VIP tent where in 30 mins, the headlining duo will make a surprise appearance at a fan event, featuring a DJ set, some bar-tending, and the pair signing anything, read anything, including a Pokemon card, empty Ballantine's cups, and the complimentary event t-shirts given to fans as they arrive. But at this moment, Santana is regaling me with her first experience of feeling that intimacy of live music.

“I went to Beyonce’s Formation world tour with my now manager, the one she did with Jay-Z, and that was the exact moment that was like, Oh my god, I want to do this for my whole life," she recalls.

In fact, she’s been practising her whole life. Learning dance at age six, creativity and movement were a key part of her expression. But at eighteen, the Spanish native moved to London to study music business management, where she also learned music composition and singing alongside. Taking that business acumen and her native love for music, she connected the dots between her Spanish and Brazilian roots, particularly baile funk, and her experience surrounded by British music, which resulted in her excellent EP, Ginga.

All of these factors shine through in her set later on. Paired with two male dancers, the music, all energy and evocation, is translated through moves that capture the smooth and sultry R&B hidden beneath her DNA-based genre-explosion.

While she may have graduated, she’s still a student of her medium: “I rehearse a lot, continue dancing lessons, I train a lot, and put a lot of attention to the little details,” she enthuses. “From the clothes to the makeup, I’m trying to give a performance for the people that love my music, and being there at that moment, giving everything I have to them.”

Today's event, especially for an establishing artist such as Santana, is a blessing. “Being able to be in these spaces, and bringing people from the outside here as well, and having that space for us to be closer together, having a different kind of experience on a Wednesday, I'm super grateful,” she says. “Creating these spaces, and allowing us to share our stories, I feel like that's a gift.”

Not five minutes after Santana leaves the stage, the gates open to the larger venue and the crowds pour into the available space, heat once again taking any leftover real estate. WhenCa7riel and Paco Amoroso take to the stage, it’s unimpeded energy from the Latin-focused crowd. The pair emerge with the same vibe as those people we all know, the kind that can saunter into any room, and seamlessly wrench control of the atmosphere becoming the focal point.

Their personalities are a yin-yang, Paco Amoroso feels the most subdued. His black boots create a larger-than-life persona that he wears quietly, which complements the exuberance of cargo-vest toting Ca7riel magnificently. The mulleted multi-hyphenate firebrand leaps and bounds, contorting faces and personifying the cataclysmic colliding genres the pair, in all honesty, do with a fantastic ease.

Bringing together such a deep sensibility of all genres, and interlacing them with an energy ripe from the schoolbook of Anderson .Paak, the energy ripples through the swerving sounds.

Ripping into the first chunk of their recent album, Free Spirits, it's unrelenting. Mosh pits, two-steps, it's all in play through a set that incorporates their takes on trap, hip-hop, dance, pop, and a sly bit of rock from their Sting-featuring cut “Hasta Jesús Tuvo un Mal Día”. Their collaboration with Fred Again, “Beto’s Horns”, closes the set with a rapturous explosion from the crowd that continues rippling through the crowd as we all disperse into the weekday night back to reality.