Songs in the key of strife: Latin pop gets political

www.miami.com Posted on Sun, Jan. 12, 2003 BY JORDAN LEVIN jlevin@herald.com

A revolution is brewing in Latin American pop music.

Inspired by the political turmoil sweeping the continent, a new generation of artists -- part of the pop and rock mainstream -- is turning meaningful songs into chart-topping hits.

They are a far cry from the folk-style protest music that accompanied the struggles between right and left in the 1960s and '70s in the United States and Latin America.

Instead, their message strikes a balance between bubblegum materialism and didactic politics. They call for individual responsibility over revolutionary action, for involvement instead of escape via the sugary romantic lyrics that have long dominated Latin pop.

Argentine pop singer Diego Torres is among them. He was named Best Male Artist Southeast in the MTV Latin America Video Music awards for his inspirational Color Esperanza (The Color of Hope), a huge hit in his economically troubled homeland, and just garnered an American Grammy nomination for Best Latin Pop Album.

''People are asking songwriters for songs with a message,'' Torres says. ``In moments of crisis, people look for something different.''

Music offers a coping mechanism to listeners, points out Abraham Lavender, a sociology professor at Florida International University.

''In Latin America, things are so bad in some places and so insecure,'' Lavender says. ``Some of it is calling for help. Some of it is just getting it off your chest. Some of it is to wake up other people.''

Such wake-up calls can be unpopular with government officials or the entertainment establishment. When Mexican rap-metal band Molotov released its debut recording in 1997, ¿Dónde Jugarán Las Niñas? (Where Will the Girls Play?), it featured songs that lambasted Mexico's upper classes and called on U.S. Latinos to vote. The recording was banned from Mexican television and radio -- but sold 400,000 copies in Mexico and more than one million worldwide.

''A lot of times, the communications media manipulates the news for the convenience of whoever is in power,'' says Miguel ''Mickey'' Huidobro, the band's lead singer. ``Music is a way to slip in other kinds of ideas.''

LIGHT THEMES

Latin popular music has always tended to be about romance and heartbreak, with occasional breaks to party. And fluffy pop music and love songs certainly haven't disappeared from the Latin charts.

''In general, people are more inclined to love songs,'' says Mario Diament, an Argentine playwright and journalist who teaches at Florida International University. ``But one of these musicians will include a song of protest or a social-based song in their repertoire and it will be very well received because of the anger. It's very difficult to believe much in love songs in Argentina nowadays where there is so little hope.''

With a wave of troubles and changes crossing Latin America -- civil war in Colombia, economic chaos in Argentina, political turmoil in Venezuela, a splintering establishment in Mexico -- Latin music listeners seem to be yearning for songs that speak to their situation in ways other than simply providing an escape from it.

''Things are really changing,'' says Colombian rocker Juanes, whose song A Dios Le Pido (I'll Ask God), a prayer for peace and love in an unsafe world, has hit No. 1 in 10 countries in Latin America since its release last spring. ``Kids in Latin America are on the Internet. They know the world is changing. They're much more astute, and they're demanding more.''

''I think that we are the people responsible for our situation,'' adds Torres. ``With the situation that we're living in Argentina, in Latin America, the way to change things is for you to do it. People need to change, but without generating violence, and without repeating the same mistakes we've made before.''

Some examples of artists whose calls for change are striking a chord:

• Torres' Color Esperanza, which encourages people in his disheartened and economically chaotic homeland with lines like ''you know you can get rid of your fears . . . paint your face the color of hope,'' catapulted him from mid- to high-level stardom and sold 1.2 million copies across Latin America.

• The latest album from popular Mexican pop-rockers Maná contains some of the most bluntly political and socially themed songs in the group's history, including Angel de Amor, a song decrying abuse of women, and Pobre Juan, about the death of a Mexican immigrant.

• Los Prisioneros, a punkish rock group from Chile that had songs banned during the right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, recently reunited after 10 years with concerts that drew 140,000 people in Chile and 2,000 in Miami.

• Colombian pop-vallenato star Carlos Vives has songs mourning violence and proclaiming Colombian pride on his hit 2001 release Dejame Entrar.

SONGS WITH SUBSTANCE

Wendy Hooth, a Peruvian who lives in Fort Lauderdale and is a fan of artists like Juanes and Maná, says it was Maná's focus on issues like indigenous rights and environmental destruction that gave her a taste for music with substance.

''The hits don't do anything for me right now -- they're empty,'' says Hooth, 30. ``I like the ones who tell you something. [Maná's] music gets you involved. Now I'm reading articles about certain things, and I write to the person who wrote the news and tell them how I think.''

Music with leftist political themes is not new in Latin America. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the ''New Song'' movement echoed the themes and style of American folk/protest songs, and its leading artists were closely allied with progressive or socialist politics. At the same time, artists from Brazil's counter-culture tropicalia movement and early rockers in Argentina protested their country's dictatorships -- and sometimes were exiled or imprisoned.

IN THE MAINSTREAM

But as the Latin music industry has become largely the province of international corporations and commercial marketing schemes, counter-cultural musical styles have been pushed to the margins. And many of the early leftist musical icons have become pop icons who are part of the social and musical mainstream.

Cuban singer-songwriters Pablo Milanés and Silvio Rodríguez, totems of the Cuban Revolution, run recording studios and foundations on the island and are revered by artists across Latin America. Milanés' last album was a series of duets with famous Latin singers.

Brazilian pop star Gilberto Gil, a founder of the tropicalia movement who continues to tackle issues like race and environmental degradation, was just appointed Brazil's Minister of Culture by newly elected president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Ruben Blades, who infused salsa with sharp social consciousness in the 1970s, is now focusing on musical experimentation, and singing about racial consciousness and personal liberation.

SUBCULTURE

In Mexico in the 1960s and early 1970s, rock was considered doubly subversive; not only was it equated with protesting students and liberal political movements, but it was also the music of the Yankee north.

''We survived the era when to be a rock-and-roller was like being a [drug-dealing] Satanist,'' says Alex Lora of El Tri, the 35-year-old band considered the godfathers of Mexican rock.

That attitude changed as rock en español grew into the Latin American pop mainstream in the 1990s.

'Before, when I went on television or radio, they'd say, `No dirty words or criticizing the government,' '' Lora says. ``Now they ask me to do that.''

While many artists may want to address the problems of their homeland, they don't want to be caught up in the right-vs.-left battles of an earlier era.

''I have so many questions and frustrations about seeing my continent so poorly managed. I would like to write more . . . songs [addressing problems], but those revolutionary movements are so discredited,'' says Colombian-born Jorge Villamizar, leader of Miami-based Bacilos, who has written songs about class differences and alienation as well as love and relationships.

``I don't believe in socialism. But whenever you talk about things like distribution of income you get put in this socialist bag.''

But that doesn't stop him or his musical compatriots from singing to their countrymen about this painfully uncertain time in Latin American history.

''Things are very difficult in Colombia now,'' says Juanes. ``But people keep loving, fighting, dreaming -- they keep on going. As an artist I want to speak the truth, to unburden myself -- and I want people to be able to unburden themselves too.''