Rock en Español: Confessions of a Recent Convert A late night in the summer of 1994, I stepped into the basement of a community center in the Lincoln Heights area of East Los Angeles and found myself in a small gathering of young Latinos who looked between 16 and 22, clad in black, long hair and leather chokers. Several young women wore black cherry lipstick, cut off shorts with black thigh-high stockings, and Doc Marten boots. The men wore their hair long; some loose and wavy, others jet black and straight, tied in a ponytail that fell down their backs over T-shirts that read Caifanes, Café Tacuba, Maldita Vecindad. They gossiped in Spanish while waiting for the next band to play. When the musicians started up a punked-out ska, the crowd began to run around in a circle, pushing and bumping into each other, as they sang along to the lyrics. For some time I had been hearing about this musical genre referred to as "rock en español." That summer night was one of discovery: I discovered rock worth listening to because it was culturally relevant to me. More importantly, I discovered the coolest looking Latinos I had ever laid eyes on, and that night I aspired to be as cool as them someday. But my deepest impression was that these young Latinos had succesfully created their own space. Writing about Latino culture as a freelancer for the LA Weekly, I covered the scene through the fall of 1994, exactly the same time that the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 campaign was in full force in California. I found an intense network of Latino youth: numerous bands and venues, and hundreds sometimes thousands of followers whose momentum only seemed to be increasing. The juxtaposition of the vibrant scene with the strident condemnation directed at these youth was striking. I began to understand that besides fulfilling a social need for young people to connect with their peers--and it just being a hell of a lot fun--rock en español has a profound significance for the young immigrant Latinos, mostly from Mexico, who largely make up the L.A. scene. In the context of a dominant culture unfamiliar and hostile toward them, the space they define through rock en español allows them to assert their identities in opposition to mainstream American popular and political culture. Rock en español emerged in Latin America over 20 years ago and represents the transformation of an Anglo and American form of youth culture into Latino cultural terms. In many cases, the sound is much like American and British guitar-based rock in its various manifestations, from grunge to heavy metal to punk. But the Spanish lyrics address more personal themes like love, identity, fear. For example "Sueños," a song by La Castaneda out of Mexico City, talks about the fear of giving in to the insanity of daily life. But there is also a musically distinctive strain of Latin American rock that emphasizes Caribbean, Mexican, and African rhythms and talks about social issues. The Maldita Vecindad song "Mojado," also from Mexico City, is about watching a friend leave to cross the border, later to hear that he died trying. In Latin America rock en español has become a symbol of rebelliousness for a generation of young people, much in the same way that it did in the U.S. when rock first emerged. It offers an alternative to the regional Mexican, tropical and cheesy pop that dominates mainstream Latino popular music and signifies complacency in political life. But in the context of the U.S., it has an additional layer of meaning for Latino immigrants. While many of the immigrant youth on this scene have been attending school and learning English for anywhere from 3 to 10 years, Spanish remains their language of preference. So on the local live rock scene, where L.A.'s young Latino immigrants perform their original music, rock allows youth to speak the language they're most comfortable with, hang out with peers who share common experiences, and place their culture, language, and unique concerns literally on center stage. In the fall of 1994, the space created by rock en español protected youth from the vociferous vilification of immigrants by right-leaning, politically-interested politicians and a paranoid, largely white electorate poised to pass Proposition 187. Through the notable growth of rock en español during that year, young Latinos talked back to the anti-immigrant public, claiming their right to live and thrive in Los Angeles--on their own terms. While local and recording bands consistently spoke out against the ballot measure in the fall of 1994, perhaps the most notable example was at a Maldita Vecindad concert in October 1994, one month prior to the vote on Proposition 187. During the instrumental interlude of their song "Mojado," lead singer Rocco, wearing a T-shirt with 187 and a red slash through it and waving a large Mexican flag, began to chant "chinga tu madre Wilson" (a popular slogan at the time) to a sold out crowd of 3,500 at the Hollywood Palace. The crowd immediately joined in, taking over the chant long after Rocco and the band had resumed singing. But rock en español certainly did not begin in Los Angeles in 1994, when I "discovered" it. Since the late 1980s, Latinos, both immigrants and Chicanos, have been building an infrastructure for the local scene. The first major catalyst was 1990's First Festival de Rock featuring recording artists from Mexico and Argentina like El Tri and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. Organizers expected a crowd of 5,000 and were stunned when 13,000 young people showed up. This strong showing spurred young Latinos to start clubs in small venues for local bands to play, most notably Las Pampas in Huntington Park, a Latino enclave in Southeast Los Angeles. In 1991 and 1992 the rock community began to gel as weekly tocadas took place at the Hong Kong Low in Chinatown. 150 rockeros gathered every week for this year and a half period, 500-600 of them, when recording bands performed. By 1993 Los Angeles became recognized as an essential rock en español market outside of Latin America, and promoters began to bring Mexican bands like Maldita and Caifanes to the Hollywood Palladium, selling out the venue. The same year, the scene began to get consistent media coverage through the local Spanish language paper La Opiñión and a major article in the LA Weekly. As Proposition 187 was gaining momentum the rock scene made significant strides. Young Latinos promoted the live and dance club scene, responding to demand and taking over salsa nights at Latino clubs in downtown L.A., Huntington Park, Pomona, and Santa Ana. The first Revolución concert, a festival of recording bands including La Lupita and Caifanes , sold out the 7,500 seater Universal Amphitheater and garnered media attention throughout Latin America. Among the most notable advances for local bands, was when they began to play and sell out at the major Sunset Strip Clubs, the Whiskey, Roxy, Troubadour and the Coconut Teazer, L.A.'s premiere showcase clubs of signed and unsigned bands. Aware of its large local audience from the LA Weekly article published the previous year, bookers for these clubs invited local rock en español bands to perform, forgoing the policy of requiring them to pre-sell tickets. "Ruta Alterna," a weekly rock column in the L.A. TimesSpanish language edition, began and survived for about a year until all community supplements were killed due to corporate downsizing. After the sweeping electoral win of Proposition 187, 1995 continued to witness gains for rock en español. Some Mexican bands, like Café Tacuba and Maldita Vecindad performed two or more times, selling out each time. Mexican band Caifanes sold out the Greek Theatre, with a capacity of 6,500. A new magazine called Retila emerged, while La Banda Elastica evolved into an international rock network, covering and distributing in cities throughout the U.S. as well as Latin America and Spain, with a circulation of 20,000. One of the more important developments of 1995 for the west coast was the founding of the rock en español record label from Aztlan Records. Seeing that local U.S. bands were not getting any attention from record labels, the San Francisco indie started its own, signing two L.A. acts Ley de Hielo and Maria Fatal. The toughest battle for rock en español has been radio play. It has not been deemed commercially viable and therefore is not part of regular rotations on any of the major Spanish language stations or English language rock stations. However, it has gained airplay on weekly and sometimes nightly shows on smaller commercial and public stations. Despite the lack of radio support, every major record chain now has a rock section in their Spanish language section. The rock en español scene in Los Angeles continues to thrive; you cannot leave a tocada without getting accosted by at least 10 people handing you flyers. Not only do immigrant Latinos affirm themselves through the act of gathering and using their native tongue, they defy the dominant culture that condemns them. Their experiences are directly addressed in the lyrical content of the music played by the local bands. Los Olivdados , an unsigned L.A. band, whose core is made up of two brothers and a friend who had a band in the Mexican Gulf city of Tampico in the state of Tamaulipas, often write about their experiences as immigrants. In "El Carro Verde," Los Olvidados sing about survival in the United States, in this case with wry humor. It talks about the narrator going to look for a job at a burger joint: "Me fui a pedir trabajo a una hambugeseria y el dueno me pregunto; 'Do you have a green card?' The owner asked me, 'Do you have a green card'? Y yo le conteste que ni carro tenia. Si tuviera uno, verde no seria. And I answered, I didn't even have a car, and if I did it wouldn't be green." Musically, Los Olvidados pound a punk energy, but follow the strain of rock that melds in Caribbean, African, and Mexican rhythms. Their sound requires a much more complex instrumentation beyond rock's core of guitar and drums. They have two percussion players, a keyboardist, accordion player and saxophonist. Their song "El Salao" is about a Latino immigrant who becomes homeless, trapped by his fate in the U.S. and poverty back home. It starts out with a Middle Eastern melody, moves into a polka ska, then soca, back to polka-ska, then an easy-paced ska. It's like the perfect slamming song. I believe that rock en español is one of the most important manifestations of Latino culture today, especially with regard to youth. I am interested in analyzing the commercial prospects of rock in the Spanish and English language culture markets. I want to explore the female spaces within rock en español because, although men dominate the stage, women have played key roles in building the L.A. infrastructure. And, I want to tell my own story of expanding my musical horizon from a disco, traditional Mexican, salsa and nueva cancion Chicana to include rocanrol, because, despite being above the average rockero age, I too have found a home in rock en español: As a first generation Chicana, I have found a space that connects me with contemporary immigrant L.A. as well as the "immigrant" experience I grew up with as a daughter of transplanted Mexicanos. Maria Elena Fernandez |
