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A Brief and General Background to the Rise and Inception Rock en Español

Rock en Español is the term that is commonly used to describe rock music that is performed featuring Spanish vocals. On the whole, Spanish-language rock has never really gained international success, with the exception of the off song or artist. It has even struggled for success in many Spanish speaking countries. Spanish influences can be found in internationally acclaimed music though, take for example Shakira, who is renowned for being a major player in the pop music sphere, but as often dipped her toes into rock, and all the while maintaining Spanish influences and often flitting between Spanish and English in her songs.

One of the first pioneers of Rock en Español was Ritchie Valens with his version of “La Bamba” which popularised Spanish-language rock music in Latin America and beyond, and he was closely followed by Danny Flores and his song “Tequila” which he recorded with The Champs, and reaching number one in the Billboard charts in 1958.

“Tequila” - The Champs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DFtkXcgNMI

Mexico became one of the first Latin American countries to adopt a rock culture, with the rock ‘n’ roll of the United States spilling over the border mixing with a rebellious youth culture allowing the genre to grow through the nation. The later influences of the British Invasion assisted Latin American nations in adapting not only rock music, but other genres such as rhythm and blues, soul, folk-rock, and pop.

By the end of the 1960’s, the band Santana had been formed, made up of musicians from both Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic backgrounds, mixing together different elements of rock ‘n’ roll and jazz, along with Latin percussion and salsa rhythms. 

Picture: Santana in 1976 [Photo from https://santanamigos.pagesperso-orange.fr/band.htm]

Following Santana’s success, interest grew in Latin American rock and folk music, with different country’s rock scenes beginning to grow – particularly in Argentina – and avenues were carved out for the likes of blues, acid rock and progressive rock to come into their own and become influential in their own right.

The internet has certainly helped Spanish-language rock music to reach wider audiences, however within it’s many different forms, and in many different Latin American societies, it was able to grow and evolve like any other genre of music, mixing the identities of rock music and Latin America to create its own culture all across the Americas and the world.

Further Reading: Zolov, E., “Mapping Rock Music Cultures Across the Americas”, Rockin’Las Américas: Rock Music Cultures Across Latin & Latin/o America (2004).

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Rock Nacional: The Homegrown Rock Music of Argentina

During the 1960’s, Argentina, and the rest of the world, was rocked by the phenomenon that was The Beatles. The country had been visited by the likes of Elvis Presley in previous years during the rise of rock ‘n’ roll, but from the mid-60s, in amongst the chaos of The Beales taking the entire world by storm, Argentina’s rock music developed in a unique way and became one of the most successful forms of “Rock en Español”. The form that rock music took on in Argentina became known as “Rock Nacional”.

Rock Nacional’s origins come from the time in which English language influences from the United States and the UK made their way into Argentinian music. A lot of the early advocates of rock music in Argentina were part of the hippy movement that arose in the late 60’s and early 70's in cities such as Buenos Aires and El Bolson.

Similar to the early rock ‘n’ roll music of Mexico before La Onda Chicana, a lot of Argentinian rock music in the early days was mostly played by cover bands. However, the breakthrough of original Spanish-language rock is regarded to have ended up coming in the form of the band Los Gatos. Los Gatos had been playing regularly in jazz bars and eventually released two singles in 1967. The one that proved to be of significance though was the track “La Balsa”, which went on to sell 200,000 copies and contributed to the spreading of popularity of the genre due to the song being sung in Spanish.

Los Gatos - “La Balsa” :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLP4KWh8QdU

Picture: Los Gatos’ [Source: Wikidata] 

Following from their success, more and more bands began to emerge, including the bands Almendra and Manal, which together with Los Gatos are considered the founders of Argentine rock, despite each of them not actually existing for very long. This paved the way for other bands though, and while other countries calmed the storms of the US and British invasions, Argentina just kept going.

Rock started to take on two separate forms in Argentina: heavy rock and acoustic rock. The heavy rock movement integrated into the heavy metal era, and some of the artists involved would eventually float towards progressive rock. The acoustic rock movement, on the other hand, took more inspiration from Argentinian folk music, experimenting with styles and lyrics that often regarded nature and life, keeping ties closer to the hippy movement that had played a part in Argentinian rock’s inception.

From here, rock in Argentina continued to evolve and would prove to be an important and influential genre of music within the South American nation. It moved in conjunction with rock trends across the globe, going through phases of progressive rock and metal, and today each of these variations, along with the likes of indie rock, alternative rock and more, are still thriving within Argentina’s music culture.

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Rock Culture in Mexico – Part II: La Onda Chicana

The literal translation for the phrase “La Onda” is “the wave”, synonymous with the word “groovy”, and the movement of La Onda began as a small movement in the mid 1960’s for the middle-class, identifying as a literature genre defined as “literature written by youth and for youth”[1], complimented with new hairstyles and a change of clothing styles, a new jargon, and of course the new rock sound.

The term itself, “La Onda”, had come to stand for cultural revolution, rebellion against a patriarchal authority and a one-party state, self-discovery and unity. Then, to the Mexican youth, despite it’s historical and nationalist connotations within the United States, “Chicano” was associated more with a loss of identity; a chicano was someone “outside of Mexican culture and society.

During the La Onda Chicana movement, in amongst protest and political unrest, the youth of Mexico looked to appropriate the fashion styles of foreign hippies; although what made this complicated was that foreign hippies were also appropriating Mexican indigenous styles, so really, Mexicans were re-appropriating their own culture’s previous style.

In musical terms, native rock music had began to resonate all over the country, and hundreds of thousands of youth discovered a sense of empowerment through La Onda Chicana’s music and the discourse of a reinvented sense of community[2]. At the heart of the movement were the new bands that were emerging, who were gaining acclaim from original pieces of music. As groups like La Revolucion de Emiliano Zapata, Bandido and Nuevo Mexico began to emerge, bands no longer felt like they were under the thumb of a recording industry that had previously intervened and tailored the music of Mexican bands. The new sound of rock music was a combination of Mexican and foreign rock n roll, and quite often creating imagery of political protest.

[La Revolucion de Emiliano Zapata (pictured) broke sales records with their track “Nasty Sex”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mb0xL2Y2b8]

For such an original new rock movement though, there was one major contradiction to it’s ‘authenticity’; the music of La Onda Chicana was written almost exclusively in English[3]. The English songs symbolised a fusion of cultures, and it’s used worked as a weapon against official nationalism[4]. However there were other contributing factors to the use of English of course, like how America’s influence when it comes to musical trends was much stronger than that of, for example, Argentina, and so bands were aware that performing in English could assist them in reaching a wider audience.

In the end, La Onda Chicana was actually quite a short-lived movement, and in culminated in the form of a two-day rock festival named Avandaro in 1971. Several thousand Mexican youths attended the festival, returning La Onda to a musical demonstration of a political movement fighting for democracy, and instead of violent displays against authority, it taught passive resistance, peace, and unification.

[1] [2] [3] [4] Zolov, E., “La Onda Chicana: Mexico’s Forgotten Rock Counterculture”, Rockin’Las Américas: Rock Music Cultures Across Latin & Latin/o America (2004).

[Photo from sourced from Discogs]

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The Emergence of Rock Culture in Mexico – Part I: Rebeldismo y Refritos

During the 1950’s, rock n roll was sweeping across the world, with the likes of Elvis and Little Richard leading the charge. The United States was already engulfed in rock n roll by the time it began to cross the border into Mexico in the late 50’s. Early introductions of rock n roll to Mexico came largely through films, displaying the rebellious nature of young US rock n rollers, and as this began to grow, the Mexican government’s fears of a disruptive culture forming within the country began to grow.

The youth of Mexico were allegedly giving in to ‘rebeldismo sin causa’ (rebellion without cause), starting to oppose the repressive stability and ideological conformity of a one-party state that they had grown up with[1], and rock n roll was threatening to undermine these very ideologies. Eventually, Mexican Congress passed a bill in 1960 designed to protect the nation’s ‘buenas costumbres’ (proper family values) and protect the state’s revolutionary project[2].

In terms of music, there was also a restrictive tariff imposed on record imports, as an attempt to keep out the ‘noxious influence of rock n roll’, but soon enough the era of rocanrol had begun.

The early incarnations of rock n roll in Mexico came in the form of ‘refritos’ – from the verb refreir, meaning “to refry” – which was basically a Spanish “refashioning” of foreign music by imposing local standards on what were foreign rock tunes. This was done primarily through changing the lyrical content of the music in order to conform to the ideological standards that were set by the state. An example of which is the song “Good Golly Miss Molly” by Little Richard, which was recorded as a refrito by Los Teen Tops, entitled “La Plaga”. The original Little Richard lyrics portrayed messages of recklessness and implications of opposition to parental authority, whereas Los Teen Tops’ altered version became one of youthful merriment.  

“La Plaga” – Los Teen Tops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmpC-pdPd8

“Good Golly Miss Molly” – Little Richard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ6akiGRcL8

[Picture from https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Teen_Tops] 

Soon enough, the mass media in Mexico was promoting the rocanrol movement as one that reflected the aspirations of middle and upper-class society. Cinema was also used as a method for helping with the promotion of new bands, and the films being played always ended with the youthful protagonist respecting the values of family and patriarchal authority[3].

This said, after 1964, the aggressive and rebellious influences of British and American rock music began to take hold. Bands began to immigrate to Mexico City where they were able to enjoy more access to music from the other side of the Mexico’s northern border. Middle-class youth began to tire of refritos, even despite having little access to hear the original versions of the songs that were being ‘refried’.

A band called ‘Los Dug Dug’s’ had made their way to the border city of Tijuana, where they began performing in an all-night gentlemen’s club. Due to the location of Tijuana, Los Dug Dug’s primarily found themselves performing in front of US tourists, who didn’t want to hear the refritos of songs they knew in English, so Los Dug Dug’s quickly learned to play the songs that their audience demanded. This allowed them to eventually return to Mexico City to give the youth of Mexico the music that they were yearning for, and eventually allowed for other bands to follow suit. 

The shift in musical practice began to push the boundaries of early Mexican rock ‘n’ roll, and contributed to the emergence of native youth counterculture. called “La Onda”[4], which will be explored in Part II. 

[All information in this post was learned and adapted from “La Onda Chicana: Mexico’s Forgotten Rock Counterculture” by Eric Zolov]

[1] [2] [3] [4] Zolov, E., “La Onda Chicana: Mexico’s Forgotten Rock Counterculture”, Rockin’Las Américas: Rock Music Cultures Across Latin & Latin/o America (2004).

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La Bamba!

“La Bamba” is probably one of the most iconic and well-known Spanish rock n roll tunes in the world.

With a few different versions of “La Bamba” being recorded in the early 20th Century, it was in the late 1950’s that the song suddenly found itself rising to fame, with rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Ritchie Valens, who was of Mexican heritage, taking inspiration from the song’s traditional background, but fusing it with more of a rock drive and making the song much more popular amongst a wider range of audiences. Sadly, Valens’ version began it’s rise to fame after his tragic death in a plane crash alongside Buddy Holly and J.P. Richardson on 3rd February 1959 – “the day the music died”. 

[ Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images]

Originally, “La Bamba” was a folk song, and a perfect example of son jarocho,a regional style of Mexican music from Veracruz. “La Bamba” was often sung by African slaves in the state of Veracruz, combining Spanish, indigenous and African musical elements, with many different versions of the song’s lyrics emerging throughout the years. “La Bamba” is quite often heard at weddings, in which the bride and groom will perform the song’s dance together to display their new form of unity.

There appears to be no direct translation of the song’s title, with some suggestions being that it originates from the Bamba tribe of Angola and Congo, named after the Bamba River[1]. However, the lyrics of the song also imply that “la bamba” is in fact a dance. One of the repeated lines of the song in Spanish is: “para bailar la bamba se necessita una poca de gracia”, which translates in English to “to dance the bamba you need to have a little grace”[2]. The song’s verses seem to follow themes of ambition and optimism of youth – a theme that was quite common in early rock n roll music.

In 1987, a biopic named “La Bamba” was released, and mostly covered the story of Ritchie Valens between the ages of 16 and 17. Most of the music in the film was performed by the band Los Lobos, and it resulted in their version of “La Bamba” achieving major success, reaching the number one spot in numerous different countries including USA, the UK, and Spain.

I think the thing that surprised me the most upon researching “La Bamba” is its Mexican origins. I had never really explored the song’s origins, simply accepting it as a well-known song across the world. I had always believed that it was a traditional Spanish song, which I think is a result of being from Europe, and of course the first place you think of when you hear Spanish is Spain. Saying this though, I had always connected the song with Mariachi bands of Mexico, so maybe some of this came down to a lack of common sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSKJQ18ZoIA

[Clip from the biopic “La Bamba” of Ritchie Valens, portrayed by Lou Diamond Phillips, performing the song “La Bamba”]

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[1] https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/black-history-month-la-bamba-and-its-african-roots/

[2] https://www.songfacts.com/facts/ritchie-valens/la-bamba