Cultural divisiveness seems to power our world. It's to the point where facts will be ignored if they favor the side you hate. It's no longer about advancing ideas to help the most people but to make sure your team wins and to denigrate those who don't hold your views.
This is very destabilizing and has been encouraged by political leaders to control the masses.
The musical duo Angine de Poitrine recently played a free show to over 150,000 people at the Montréal Jazz festival. I don't care for them that much plus being crammed in with that size of crowd on a hot night, doesn't do it for me.
However it got me thinking about what draws so many people to this group and decided that s big part is their quirky originality. They wear strange costumes and speak to each other in an alien language plus use invented hand gestures which their fans copy at their shows.
Another aspect for me is that they are as apolitical as they come and thus can be adopted by anyone. You can be one of their groupies and be one of the ones who gets it. They don't come with a message other than to infect you with their grooves
Sure, there are better musicians out there with more interesting compositions but they aren't as uniquely weird as this band from rural Quebec who has gone viral. In the era of AI they seem to have come out as a rebellious antidote to prepackaged pap from a computer. This despite the fact that their music relies heavily on rhythmic tempo and repetitive lines you might find in middle eastern music.
There is something about this strange timeline which has people hungry for something that hasn't chosen a side; something that isn't branded yet by anyone and just wants you to vibrate to what they are presenting.
Maybe that's where the appeal lies in this time of echo chambers. They can be for you who you want them to.
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