55 years of rock in Piura

From playing the alien to the own – from face-to-face to the virtual platform.

 

The rock is a music genre that came out from a cultural mix in the United States as well as United Kingdom. Such disparate rhythms like the blues, the jazz, or the country were the ingredients those were used amid 20^th century for bringing the rock & roll to life, and starting from it, one decade later, to go configuring the rock like a cultural movement that globalized, even before the first Arpanet transmission, the predecessor of Internet,so far as 1969.

 

The Groove could arrive into Piura in 1967, although only covers were initially played. The experienced was not a brise but a blizzard. “More than 80 bands appeared,” Juan Francisco Facundo Silva, 43, tells me. He is one of the few genre’s advocates, at least in the two largest cities of Piura Department.

 

“I’m talking you about 1960s and 1970s like Scarface, The Delfines, The Jailers, The stones,” he remembers quoting an investigation by Miguel Almeida, who reached to systematize the movement’s beginning in Piura, in a over-30-page essay, just in case somebody wishes to go in-depth.

 

From the cover to the streaming

When the shocking 1980s ended,the Piura-based bands left to play borrowed themes and they dedicated to create their own ones. “Now,in 1990s, there is a milestone – for example, bands what made their own music like Libre and Diáfano, and the 2K already came in much later with bands like The Shokekoks, 1900,that are still struggling, and there were more,” Facundo goes on.

 

That time, almost every province’s capital city had, at least,one formation dedicated to the rock, like The Sepultureros, in Ayabaca City, that started to play circa 1995. It also started the division into sub-genres with so much diverse influences like the ska or the punk. The to pogue verb (dancing collectively by a friendly push) began to be part of the youth’s vocabulary of Piura.

 

Since 2010 up to now, there are new bands and new challenges to compete in a world what seems to leave step by step behind the classic media like the vinil (although it resists to die), the compact cassette (that already have disappear almost at all), the compact disc (that survives hard-working), and delivers up to the casting at the virtual cloud through the streaming, migration accelerated  after the Covid-19 pandemic

, that forced to close the public places for one entire year.

 

Facundo himself had to go through the FM-broadcasting until creating his own Facebook page, Facundo Rock, that dedicates long editions to present themes, groups, and analyzing the rock frame with interactions inside and outside Peru, inclusive. Some users follow him from furthest sites like Australia.

 

Self-managed movement

“Nowadays, the problem is there’s no support by regional governments,”  the presenter criticizes. “There are places that are closed like Piura Municipal Theater, Manuel Vegas Castillo Theater, also the Acoustic Shell (of Miguel Cortés Children Park] that requires to fix for cultural & sports events.”

 

After 55 years the first rock band played in Piura, even the district’s capital cities have theaters or stages especially built for  shows. In other words, there is much offer and the demand seems not to have decreased despite the urban genre looks like to have drowned it worldwide.

“Mostly, who  dedicate to make events or sessions are the independent people who like the rock – the bands themselves also self-manage but they are few,” Facundo explains.

 

The independent funding model  with private facilities is based upon the owner gains from sales of food and drinks, the producer gains from the box office. If the show is made for free and outdoors, like Facundo made in Sullana, October 15^{th (to celebrate  the}  Facundo Rock’s 2^nd anniversary), the public support basically consists in allowing the use of the place (in this case, the Convention Center’s amphitheater). The rest is gotten through sponsorship.

 

What is clear, in fact, is that amid this half-a-century of rock in Piura, the teenagers and youth of that time are this generation’s grandparents. And, very despite the cultural, technological  evolution,they have eased the seed follows growing, giving fruits.

 

The challenge for the rock in Piura is understanding that, not quitting to be a relatively marked local place, today has better chances than 55 years ago for becoming global. There’s talent – let’s see how much it’s able to shine.