When we talk about culture we tell about the traditions, Memories, experiences, our people, our land.
when we talk about art we talk about music, talent, canvases, oil paintings, watercolors, guitars, microphones, voices, love, adrenaline and passion for what we love.
When we talk about history we tell about our progress, our evolution.
So today we'll talk a little bit about the history of music in this beautiful continent called Latin America; the way the rock genre came about, how and when it took hold.
We Latinos have created our own musical samples, we associate our environments and make them tangible and symbolic through different rhythms. Latin America has given the world sounds as emblematic as samba, cumbia, vallenato, son, salsa, reggae, danzón, chicha and ska. However, we have also adapted one of the most significant rhythms of the XX century: rock and roll.
Rock was born in the United States as a representation of the cultural mix: the culture of survival of African-Americans, the rebellion of the white children of the great repression and the social conditions of change of the postwar period promoted the musical culture that would set the trend in the following decades. Rock and roll was born; a rebellious culture of protest,demands, and out of giving young people the presence and making them being part of something new.
While this was happening in the United States,small movements began to emerge Latin America, sponsored by the most media, which seek to emulate part of the American "rocker" discourse. In Mexico, a whole model was imported and softened in the voices of Angélica María, Alberto Vázquez, Cesar Costa and Enrique Guzmán. In South America, rock began to take two forms: one more linked to the underground like Los Saicos in Peru and the other, much more linked to the North American aesthetic, like Sandro in Argentina.
In our continental region something wonderful emerged: we can talk about rock as a musical genre, but we can also talk about rock as an attitude. Rock is not only the form, it is also the background; music goes beyond the puritanical boundaries that pigeonhole the musical notes.
Musical crossbreeding has become present, the seed imported from the United States, flourished in the southern lands of the continent; the flower changed and became richer. The music combined the guitars with the jaranas, the Latin folklore took over the musical genre
and made it ours: it gave it a Latin face and body, it gave it shape and sound, a new genesis was in sight.
Mexico has become a hub for the dissemination of musical proposals, a hub were Latin American musicians look for space, with a large audience and in their own language. Mexico today represents the best market for Latin rock, as evidenced by the Vive Latino Festival which, after 12 editions, has established itself as the ideal place to receive and exhibit musical proposals from all over Latin America.
