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 20th 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.
.jpeg)
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 15th (to celebrate
the Facundo Rock’s 2nd
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.
