Indie pop and alternative rock group
Birkins, formerly The Birkins, represents Gran Canaria’s 2010s indie projection, with an aesthetic shaped by international alternative pop and a personal reading of David Bowie.
The Canary Islands Government documents The Birkins performing at the 2010 Festival de Músicas Alternativas de Canarias after winning the 2009 Heineken Greenspace contest and with a planned appearance at FIB. In 2019, now as Birkins, the band presented You are not alone at Teatro Guiniguada, a double album devoted to The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The line-up cited then was Dani Birkin, Cristina Santana, Alby Ramírez and Sergio Miró.
Their importance lies in placing a Canarian band within national indie circuits and reference festivals. The Bowie tribute shows a contemporary Atlantic dialogue: musicians from Gran Canaria reading an Anglo-American canon from an island scene with its own production.
The Canary Islands Government linked their influences to Radiohead, The Beatles, Joy Division, David Bowie, Stereo Total, Serge Gainsbourg and The Smiths. This mixture produces indie pop with less predictable melodies, chromatic colour and arrangements crossing guitars, voices and a European alternative-pop sensibility.
The group’s transmission rests on festivals, institutional venues, recordings and collaborations. You are not alone brought together instrumental and vocal versions with guest musicians, extending Birkins’ network beyond the archipelago without erasing its Gran Canaria base.
The band wins the contest and prepares its move into national festivals.
It takes part in the Festival de Músicas Alternativas de Canarias.
It presents the double David Bowie tribute album at Teatro Guiniguada.
Tenerife
Since the twentieth century
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Gran Canaria
First performance in 1969; first album in 1970
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Gran Canaria
Active between 1965 and 1972; Ciclos was released in 1974
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