Slug: Latin alternative music

Latin Beat Magazine, Dec, 2004 by Melissa Castillo-Garsow

Luis Tamblay grew up in Miami listening to The Beatles, but as he effortlessly switched between songs in Spanish and English, he won over one timid New York audience with the pulsating rock beats of a new kind of music created in the U.S.A., but with inspiration from Latin America.

"We don't translate our songs whether they're written in English or Spanish," says Tamblay, 30. "It's just natural." Tamblay is front man for Volumen Cero, a U.S.-grown band (with Chilean, Peruvian and Colombian roots), which recently released its third album, Estellar, on Warner Music Latino. The Miami-based rock band is the first Latin alternative group to be profiled on MTV's Advanced Warning and recently landed on MTV's Top 40 video playlist at number 38.

The band's CD release party at New York's Sounds of Brazil (SOBs) in SOHO--a bilingual, international mix of flavors and cultures--could easily have been a commercial advertisement for this fast-growing Latin alternative music, a movement that the Latin Alternative Music Conference describes as a "hybrid of café con leche, of rock and timbales, of hip-hop and jalapeños, of new music with a subtle Latino accent."

"There are so many kids out there who are like us," says Tamblay, "who speak Spanish and English because of their parents but who grew up here ... we're trying to bring that element to the band--that we're a bilingual, bicultural band."

For many New York fans of Latin alternative music, the musicians are finally beginning to mirror their multicultural existence. In this way, groups like Volumen Cero and Barra Libre, who opened for Volumen at the CD release party, represent a very different trend in which their members are as diverse as the alternative scene with

"You see, especially in New York in the local groups, there are musicians from five different countries playing in a band and bringing what they grew up with to their shows," says Paz Jiménez, director of Latin Alternative Music at SOBs.

Barra Libre is a good example. The New York band is composed of three Mexicans, an Ecuadorian bassist, a Puerto Rican singer and an American trumpeter. On the New York Latin alternative scene, the biggest acts are Yerba Buena (a unique Cuban/Venezuelan/Virgin Islander/US mix of musicians) and the Venezuelan members of Los Amigos Invisibles.

"Hall our audience is like us--bilingual, bicultural, went to college in the US, have a job here and are thinking of going back someday," says Raúl González, a native of Mexico City and front-man for Barra Libre. "But the other half are Americans, US-born Latinos, or others."

After listening to musical greats like La Ley and Café Tacuba, US-born Latinos are forming their own alternative bands. Besides Miami natives Volumen Cero, there are New York groups such as Soulsa (comprised of Washington Heights natives of Puerto Rican, Dominican and Cuban backgrounds that play rock over Afro-Cuban rhythms), and Los SuperKarma, a team of brothers born in the US to Ecuadorian parents.

Jiménez adds that the growing number of Mexican immigrants in New York is also influencing this music scene. Both Monterrey and Tijuana have become Latin alternative hotspots, launching groups such as Kinky, El Gran Silencio, Molotov, Julieta Venegas and Nortic Collective and creating a base for Mexican fans and musicians who move to New York. Speaking of this influx, Jiménez says, "Many are second-generation Mexicans and they are really finding in rock a way to express themselves and to build an identity."

Josh Norek, a business affairs and media relations manager for LA-based Nacional, a new record label focused solely on the Latin alternative genre, agrees. "Although Los Angeles, drawing strength from its proximity to alterlatino hotspots Monterrey and Tijuana, continues to be the bigger scene, New York is on the upswing," Norek says, citing the influx of Mexican immigrants familiarized with these groups. Norek, who co-founded the Latin Alternative Music Conference (now in its fifth year), also noted that for the first three years they chose to hold the conference in New York because of its importance to this scene.

But today, this same Latin Alternative Music Conference is being held worldwide--in Toronto, Mexico City and Buenos Aires--at the same time as in its Los Angeles headquarters.

And for bands like Barra Libre, this just means that New York's embrace of this music will be more international. "It's just like a world party, you know, and I think it's beautiful" González said as he surveyed the crowd after his performance, dressed in a Che Guevara shirt and a "New York" hat. "It just brings home the idea of a world consciousness."

International fans are so important for bands like Barra Libre, because, although New York may be on the upswing, commercially, there is still a ways to go for Latin alternative bands. "Our market goes beyond the US--to Latin American and Europe, catering to a young bilingual and bicultural population," González says. "So there certainly is a market and it's growing."