Photo by Ana María Camejo
The vast majority of people who have been involved with Rock al Parque over these 20 years continue to expend energy on it and discuss every aspect of the festival because, deep down, there was a moment in their lives when they felt pride in living in a city where an event of this magnitude was held.
The truth is that it's no small detail that Rock al Parque was born as an unprecedented event of peace and tolerance in a country in perpetual war, has survived two decades. So much cliché about the Bogota rocker, so much useless complaining among the most conservative adults, the most extreme religious people, the old-school police; so many attempts at sabotage from both insiders and outsiders, And look at us still here, getting ready to go to Simón Bolívar Park to meet up with our people.
I, a man nearing fifty, dare to confess that I have had moments of joyful tears during the history of the festival. I felt overwhelmed at the moment I saw eighty thousand people singing Left, while Christian de la Espriella of Pornomotora ran all over the Plaza stage one night in 2005. I celebrated those wonderful moments that same year eight minutes of sonic lysergic ecstasy The Ganjas playing their song Dancehall. I smiled like no one else in 2013 when Hora Local finally took to the stage with Lago and Eduardo Arias, as the unlicensed announcer he claims to be. evoking an apocalypse that never happened, announced that «"Almost a century after its founding, the BBC in London has ceased broadcasting.".
I saw a crowd of one hundred and forty thousand people give a step back to avoid a catastrophe and then continue moshing as it should be, under the commanding voice of Dilson from La Pestilencia in 1998. I saw Héctor Buitrago from Aterciopelados in 1995, in that lost setting of the Olaya Herrera stadium, proudly inviting to the people of the surrounding neighborhoods, streets where he had walked all his life. I saw Adrián Dárgelos from Babasónicos dressed in fringe and with an uncontrollable attitude inviting to all brilliantly feverish minds From the evening to kissing all night long, after all, nobody was going to notice.
Rock al Parque doesn't just do and build every year an important part of the soundtrack of Bogotá. He also knows how to create incredible images that deserve to be preserved in the memory of a city that, unfortunately, It works to constantly sabotage itself. Every year we discuss the major and minor points of this festival, but vehemently contradicting what some officials in charge of the event think, We do not do it because we oppose its celebration. On the contrary. It is here, in the middle of the park and amidst the noise, that we believe many of the inhabitants of the Colombian capital have a small moment of faith In an unequal, suffocating, and unjust city. This is where the fucking real rock of our people explodes.
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