By Santiago Rivas @rivas_santiago
Photo: Ana María Camejo
I feel demotivated by the conclusion I reached while planning this article: Rock in Bogotá is not happy. Since most of our "rockers" (musicians and audience alike) tend to believe that happiness is an inherent quality of tropical music, which they want nothing to do with, this might not seem like a problem at all. On the contrary, it might seem like we're on the right track, since there isn't a single rocker smiling for the camera, and therefore, we can assume that happy people don't even have any reason to attend the festival. I think it's awful.
We forget that 21 years ago, and for several editions, Rock Al Parque was a happy place. It still is, in a way, a wonderful spectacle where the work of so many musicians, for such diverse tastes, comes together in a park set aside for three days for the city's enjoyment. However, the hopes and will of all sectors of the cultural market no longer converge there; The musicians aren't happy, nor is the audience, nor the journalists, nor the festival director. They all seem trapped, acting out of inertia; no one seems happy to be working in the world of rock. And of course, nobody can define what rock is anymore, and that's why the debate is polarized, because the most vibrant (most joyful) manifestations are those that best reflect our mixed nature, while the criticisms from the mummies of purism, who have the nerve to reject their own tropical nature, their identity, are also intensifying.
It's been many years now with the same themes: that the festival doesn't benefit the bands, that there are small cliques that monopolize the market for their own internal curation, that metalheads are unable to pay for a single ticket and keep demanding the same metal from 30 and 20 years ago, that punks only want punk, that diversity and the culture of peace are the biggest of all political events designed to bring together the people who vote the least. Whether anyone cares at all, beyond their own management report, the photo or the press release.
Whatever the situation, Bogotá is a city that has managed to stifle the flow of its own music scene. We could abandon our conventional notions of competition, payola, and commercialization, but instead we fight amongst ourselves (journalists and media outlets as well as musicians, urban tribes, producers, record labels, etc.) and We're still locked up, listening to the same old stuff, going to the same places, and downloading the same reheated, reworked, and repeated music from the internet. Rock al Parque is simply a reflection of that.
So my proposal is simple: to bring joy back to rock music in Bogotá. I'm not saying we should forget the darkness, whether it's the darkness of the dead and the disappeared or the darkness of Beelzebub; I'm not saying we should deny what's wrong and return to the flock of conformist children of God. I know that Joy can be found in doing what we are passionate about, and we also have to reinvent the city., so that the spaces are finally sufficient and we don't spend these three days of the year going on and on about the same thing.
It's difficult to abandon the comfort of that small space reserved for those considered marginal and expendable, the black sheep of every family in Bogotá. The fear of losing this small niche and all that it implies is the main reason for our great paralysis. It seems incredible, but in these days when nothing is set in stone, The more we insist on repeating the most obsolete formulas in the market, the more we end up with authentic and relevant proposals, or striving to be something we are not. We should embrace the task of paying closer attention, changing our rhythms, playing more (and taking the game more seriously); we should commit to listening differently, writing differently, composing differently, and messing up more often. Rock in Bogotá should be a more enjoyable experience.
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