Two Firsts and an Opportunity

For sisters Sofia "Sof Tot" Trucco and Clara "Wen" Trucco of the Argentine band, Fémina, their time touring with Center Stage marked a time of two major transitions.

The ExchangeAlumni pair’s tour in the United States kicked off the return of the international music exchange program. It was also their first time touring again since the pandemic, which they described as an enormous opportunity and a gift. Both Clara, the group’s percussionist, flautist, and vocalist, and Sofia, who sings, and plays guitar and ronroco - a stringed South American instrument often compared to a lute or a mandolin, are now more conscious of seizing the moment and being more present onstage.

“It was totally a normal thing before that we didn’t think much at all [about performing],” says Sofia. “It was our life and that was it. And suddenly I think that stop [of everything] with the pandemic was an opportunity of rebuilding and reconstructing.”

But that wasn’t the only transition for the band. Sofia and Clara started Fémina with their best friend from childhood, Clara “Claridad” Miglioli, and with Claridad not able to make the tour, they weren’t sure at first if the group would continue.

The trio had dropped their first album, Trapasa, in 2014 after moving to Buenos Aires from their native Patagonia years before. Their fourth album, Perlas & Conchas (Pearls and Shells), came out in 2019 to wide acclaim, with a track featuring Iggy Pop, and coverage in Rolling Stone magazine, with the full trio featured in its production and on its Botticelli-inspired cover. Very early on, the group’s music and lyrics made an impression on audiences.

“When we started, we started doing songs that we were not so conscious about what we were saying, we were 20 years old,” says Sofia. “We were growing up and thinking lots of things, starting to get conspicuous of who we were, and suddenly we started having people approaching us, saying, ‘oh, thank you for saying this. Thank you for being a voice.’ You know, suddenly, in the feminist march, a lot of people with signs with our lyrics, or people that make tattoos of our lyrics.”

The reaction astounded them, and the group kept going, creating songs across genres as diverse as R&B to folk and acoustic from Patagonia, tight a cappella harmonies, to psychedelic and alt-Latin ballads, touching their audiences as much as themselves. All along the way, they trusted in themselves and pushing against the music industry’s narrative of how they had to be and what they had to produce.

“The music life, the art life, is an opportunity of thinking of other ways of doing things, of thinking the world, of thinking humanity and that’s why we are doing this,” says Sofia. “And take the chance of really doing that, of really change something in yourself and think and analyze and go ahead with what you are.”

But to perform without Claridad put the group at a crossroads.

Ultimately, the sisters decided to trust in the music and seize the opportunity of the international exchange, which has exposed them to a different way of touring, with several top musicians from the Buenos Aires music scene along with them. Fémina began its tour in Washington, D.C., and continued on to Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, Joe’s Pub in New York City, the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour in Kentucky, and finishing up in California at UC San Diego and the Joshua Tree Music Festival.

They describe the tour with Center Stage as a very special one where they got the chance to know people on a deeper level, getting to give classes to students, engage in cultural exchange activities, as well as perform.

Being on tour with a U.S. Department of State-funded program like this is even more special for the group right now, Sofia says, because the post-pandemic moment makes it all much more real.

“It’s like, thinking anything can happen in any moment and that we are able to do this and have this opportunity of doing our music and saying things, we are so grateful to be able to continue,” she says.

They plan to carry that momentum of expecting anything to happen into their return to Argentina, where they’ll record new songs, reconnecting after a rest from their U.S. tour, and without rushing the process.

“It’s a very special moment for us as we said,” says Clara. “We’re going to return and have a rest a little bit after this. And start doing new music and connecting the two of us. That’s the first thing we want to do, connect with the music in a different way than we used to do before because it’s a different group now, so we have to see what this different group proposes.”

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Fémina is one of five music and dance ensembles in Center Stage Season 6, a program that strives to promote global ties and connect with audiences both on and offstage. The public-private partnership between the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the New England Foundation for the Arts began in 2012. This season will continue with groups from Argentina, Armenia, and Taiwan.