By José Gandue @Gandour Photos by Simona Malaika @simonamalaika
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A few hours after the twenty-fifth edition of Rock al Parque ended, the long-awaited drone photo was published: Simón Bolívar Park was packed to the rafters, where, as the grandmothers would say, there wasn't a single space to be found. The figures were staggering enough to justify any sublime description. A torrent of grandiose and baroque phrases rained down, overflowing with lavish praise, and there was no shortage of triumphal chants for the organization, where they spoke of strident pride, victories, successes, resounding defeats of the critics, humiliation of the pessimists, and authoritarian rejection of anyone who had anything to say other than praise for those responsible for such a feat. And yes, The first thing to say is that there was generally very good music during the three days of the festival, We all try to hone our murky voices alongside Fito Páez, Los Amigos Invisibles, Babasónicos, La Vela Puerca, and other undeniably talented stars. That was known from the start; that's why they brought in those legends of proven quality., That's what the good people went to see, and they were playing it safe.. From the moment Idartes announced the selection, we said that choosing established artists was a sure thing. Many, thousands, went home happy, and that's great. The institution in charge of the competition fulfilled that part of its commitment. Now, what price did it have to pay to make that happen?
Let's go point by point:
-Let's start by asking the questions we always ask when we talk about Rock al Parque, as an event organized with public money: What is the festival for? Who should it be useful to? What should it be for?
This edition of Rock al Parque had clear intentions of using Rock al Parque as a political pamphlet from the Mayor's Office of Bogotá. For that reason they changed the original date of the event, and therefore restructured the idea of everything that was going to take place this year in the city's locations., That's why they spent unusual amounts on hiring some artists. All this to boost the popularity ratings of a clearly unpopular mayor, especially among younger citizens. A mayor who never liked Rock al Parque., who always thought the festival was an unnecessary white elephant, He not only proposed ending it during his first administration, but upon assuming his position again almost four years ago, he tried to eliminate it once more, appointing with clear instructions an inefficient first director of the District Institute of the Arts who fortunately did not last a year in office. It was obvious that Rock al Parque was being used, in an election year, to ensure that no one would forget Peñalosa and to pave the way for his successor. Did everything that was done change the character's image among the inhabitants of the capital? I highly doubt it, but a few pesos went into trying.
The festival, as it was organized, did little to help those who should have benefited most from the event: the musicians of this city. The organizers talk about numbers, and we'd like to respond to them with numbers:
-Only 26 out of 72 musical bands from Bogota participated in the festival. A little over a third of the lineup. (Let's not include representatives from the Crea projects, who, despite their insistence, are not yet an active part of the local scene. They are merely developing aspirations, more indicative of a district educational project than a musical reality, which we hope will flourish).
More than three hundred bands applied to the district call for bands wishing to participate in the festival. Forty groups qualified for the final selection auditions. And only one, one!!!, had a female voice. That's extremely serious at a time when, if we take a close look at what's happening in Bogotá, we're experiencing a tremendously exciting moment with female talent. A missed opportunity.
-The call for special shows, open to active bands with more than twelve years of history, It had every irregularity imaginable. With permission from the Music Management, for the first time in the festival's history, one of the organizers was allowed, the curator of the competition himself, as a juror, a fact without excuse, even though he fulfilled his duties ad honorem. From there, what happened with Pedrina (an artist who did not meet the requirements of the call for entries in any way) and Doctor Krápula (whose withdrawal from the festival cannot be simply explained by a bureaucratic oversight), coupled with the fact that ten slots were allocated and only seven winners were selected from the call for proposals, without any explanation, casts a shadow of doubt that we hope will be clearly clarified. The responses on these matters have always been evasive, and they surely hope that the large number of festival attendees will dispel all questions about the process. I doubt it.
-Did you see any district bands in the program for the final day, during peak audience time, on the main stage? Wasn't this the perfect moment to showcase to the city (and the world) an example of what rock music in this city is made of? Between the scant official publicity given to the selected Bogotá acts and the organizers' lack of interest in building something more for the local scene beyond the three days of Rock al Parque, We can suspect that for them, Bogota rock is uncomfortable and unimportant in their real plans for musical culture.. Does that seem exaggerated? Just one example: Compare the announcements made for all the international guests, the media coverage they received. Now go and check how much information was released by the press department about those selected in the two district calls for applications., the time these announcements were made and the impact they tried to achieve.
Would it be foolish to insist on what I've always claimed? The Rock al Parque festival was created to support the Bogota music scene And were the international guests the icing on the cake that gave the event its final touch? If so, we're back to square one: Rock al Parque is a huge entertainment expense that fails to build a cultural industry., music economy or, at the very least, a foundation to continue growing artistically in a city where, for the next three hundred and sixty-two days of the year, the Mayor's office does little or nothing about it.
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Final points for now:
-The curator states in an interview that the closing show of the Bogotá Philharmonic had been planned for a year. If that's true, I don't understand several things. One of them was the constant improvisation felt on stage with the guest singers, and, on the other hand, that they carried out the sound check on the same day as their complex performance, with two hours to go before the park gates open, causing the program to be delayed by up to three hours. Many, many people stayed to watch the show, leaving around 2:00 in the morning to find a city that, for several hours, had no public transportation and where private vehicles that transported some of them made a killing by charging absurd fares to take them home.
-Twenty-odd years later and the city's public channel, Canal Capital, in the only time during its programming where it achieves a decent rating all year, They haven't learned how to broadcast the festival concerts with adequate sound. And you know what's worse? Idartes has to pay them to do the broadcast, and they're the ones who keep the rights to the footage. It's a topsy-turvy world.
-Juanes, okay. That's clear evidence that the final figure was more important than anything else. What I'm about to say will sound very radical, but his presence corrupted the meaning of the festival. Juanes does a similar free event on his own and draws almost the same number of people as were at the Plaza stage that day. He didn't need the festival, and Rock al Parque, in its original spirit, didn't need Juanes. The idea behind Rock al Parque was always to showcase novelty, emerging talent, what had been born among us., what grew under the protection of the festival. From then on, whoever comes next, just to show the photo of the drone blasting the Simón Bolívar to its limits, can bring the artist mainstream From the moment, from Shakira, Sebastian Yatra, or the hologram of the late Diomedes Diaz, and he'll say that he made Rock al Parque the most successful in history. That will simply be, because of its contradiction, a lie that's hard to overcome.
