Is “Rock en Español” A Dead Language?

That question was asked in the Los Angeles Times on the occasion of Café Tacuba playing a show at the Hollywood Bowl and the Latin Alternative Music Conference in New York City:

Where is the new generation of Mexican rockers?

The very fact that this 18-year-old group remains the marquee name in Spanish-language rock speaks volumes about the state of the genre. Their wave of roqueros (rockers) whose vitality and vision promised to transform Latin music has receded since the turn of the millennium. Nobody has come along to seriously challenge the stature and influence of Café Tacuba.

Not that there are no new groups in Mexico. The capital has a busy indie rock scene that is finding outlets on the Internet, partly through Mexico’s new MySpace site, mx.myspace.com. But the new generation has abandoned the fundamental principles that gave rock en español its power and broad appeal.

Today’s Mexican bands reject the concept of fusing rock with native forms of Latin American folk music, a concept articulated in the early ’70s by pioneering producer Gustavo Santaolalla, who has worked with Café Tacuba and other major groups in the field. The upstarts don’t care to incorporate Mexican music or reflect Mexican reality in their songs, as bands such as Café Tacuba and Maldita Vecindad did in their very names.

Nowadays, Mexican bands often pick names that disguise their identity and country of origin. They call themselves Allison, Los Dynamite, hummersqueal and Motel. In fact, some don’t even care to sing in Spanish anymore.

“I feel kind of bummed about that because it’s what I’ve been fighting against all my life,” Santaolalla told me this week. “I think it’s an example of cultural dependency and many sad aspects of globalization.” …

Santaolalla’s slogan: “Pinta tu aldea y pintarás el mundo.” (“Paint your own village and you’ll paint the world.”)

It’s a good lesson for young rockers still stuck in their MySpace pages, because the world isn’t waiting for a Mexican version of My Chemical Romance or Nirvana. Imitation is just a form of flattery, not creativity.

While imitation seems to be a key to success for English-language acts, the language barrier is nearly insurmountable for foreign language acts without a distinct cutting edge. With a few exceptions, radio playlists have only narrowed, even at the college level, making less and less room for the unfamiliar, not to mention the tightening of the shelves at record stores. Harp‘s Mario I. Oña covered the Latin Alternative Music Conference for the magazine’s Web site, and made note of one band’s performance:

It’s not bad music; it’s just not very original. Doing Cure en español or the Specials en español is so late ’80s, and it would be regrettable if Latin alternative devolves back to being nothing more than someone else’s music sung in Spanish.

While the accessible multicultural sounds and exciting live act of Manu Chao–who also got a boost from performing at Coachella–have built some anticipation for his forthcoming disc in the U.S. mainstream, it remains to be seen how much Latin influence there will be in the alt-rock landscape in the near future–despite the fact that the Latino population in the U.S. is climbing.

Few are following Café Tacuba’s lead [LA Times] Latin Alternative Music Conference, Day 3 [Harp]