Did anybody see any bands or panel discussions at the 6th Annual Latin Alternative Music Conference in New York City?

There's one post-conference show out west at the Santa Monica Pier I see on their site.

None of you New Yorkers attended any of this?

There was a write-up in the NY Times the other day...

Thanks.

August 8, 2005
Latinos Say Rock Is More Than Just Reggaetón
By JON PARELES

Jealousy was in the air at the sixth annual Latin Alternative Music Conference, a four-day convention that brought more than 1,000 participants to the Puck Building in NoLIta and staged concerts from Brooklyn to Spanish Harlem. Conferencegoers have been working for years to make inroads for multicultural hybrids from across the Americas and Europe. But last year, mainstream Latin media were suddenly smitten with a different alternative: reggaetón, the Puerto Rican twist on hip-hop and Jamaican dancehall.

When the Colombian band Aterciopelados headlined a Central Park SummerStage concert of Latin alternative rock on Saturday afternoon, its singer, Andrea Echeverri, introduced one of her songs, "Lactochampeta," by explaining it was based on a Colombian genre called champeta that is similar to reggaetón. She added that she didn't like reggaetón much.

Since it began in 2000, the conference has been rallying the musicians and business people seeking to promote innovative music - rock, pop, electronica and hip-hop merged with local traditions. It has placed its hopes on the quality of the music, in the mainstream acceptance of Latin hybrids by hitmakers like Shakira, and in the inevitability of demographic changes that are creating a young, bilingual audience. (The most recent census figures, from 2002, estimate that one in eight Americans is Hispanic.)

Latin alternative music has been gaining exposure on noncommercial radio, on programs like the Los Angeles television show LATV (online at www.latv.com) and on tour. "The Red Zone," a popular Los Angles radio program featuring Latin rock, is going into nationwide syndication. Yet while commercial Latin media have occasionally embraced a rocker - like Juanes from Colombia, who has won Latin Grammy awards - as a pop star, until reggaetón arrived they had largely clung to longstanding genres like pop, salsa and Mexican regional music.

With its simple, danceable beat, and with songs and videos full of men bragging about sexy girls, reggaetón had been building an audience in the Caribbean for at least a decade, then suddenly exploded on Latin radio stations here. Last year, the Clear Channel chain and other radio-station owners introduced a new format called Hispanic Urban (often compressed to Hurban). The format has been taking over older Spanish-language stations, bringing in bilingual disc jockeys and playlists that prominently feature reggaetón, often alongside Latin pop and English-language hip-hop.

At the conference, Latin alternative partisans who see reggaetón as lowest-common-denominator pop were divided about whether it was one more obstacle or a foot in the door. Most were optimistic. "Reggaetón is creating space for other people," said Adam Kidron, the president of Urban Box Office, which released "The Chosen Few," a best-selling reggaetón documentary.

"Whether you're in favor or not of reggaetón, it has shaken things up," said Gustavo Fernandez, the president of the record label and distribution company Delanuca Inc. "We just need to keep at it - the talent is there."

The talent, at small showcases and big outdoor concerts, included both established bands and a few promising newcomers who lived up to the border-hopping possibilities of Latin alternative music, a deliberately open-ended term that embraces rockers, rappers and all sorts of dance music. It even included English-language rock from an American band, Coheed and Cambria, whose lead singer is Claudio Sanchez. The band's churning blend of emo self-pity and busy progressive-rock riffing turned the field at SummerStage into a frantic mosh pit, where Hispanic and Anglo teens happily collided.

Bebe, a Spanish songwriter, started her SummerStage set with the kind of pop-flamenco that has been on European charts in recent years, showing off a voice full of husky passion. But she was just as skillful at straightforward folk-rock and speed-tongued rapping, and her songs had a socially conscious edge. "Malo," a hit in Spain, was an unflinching song about domestic abuse, mixing defiance and fear.

Natalia Lafourcade, a 21-year-old Mexican songwriter who led her band Natalia y la Forquetina on Thursday night at Bowery Ballroom, moved between gentle bossa nova, lilting pop, full-tilt rock and dance music hinting at Bjork, all with a girlish flair. Another Mexican band, Kinky, headlined on Friday night at Celebrate Brooklyn!, bounding across the stage as it played unstoppable funk dotted with norteño accordion and mariachi trumpet.

A showcase at S.O.B.'s on Thursday night gave a dozen performers two songs each. Among them were Ana Laan, who used an echo device to stack up full arrangements from solo vocals; Roberto Poveda, whose electric guitar and voice were all he needed for volatile syncopations, and Sara Valenzuela, whose songs were instant melodramas.

Americans make Latin alternative music, too. Javier Garcia, whose parents are Irish and Cuban, grew up in Spain before settling in Miami as a teenager. At the Bowery Ballroom, his band reached back to the rumba percussion and Santeria chants of Afro-Cuban tradition, but went on to meld them with pan-American rhythms: funk, mambo, reggae, even the klezmerlike oompah of cuarteto music from Argentina, all heading toward catchy pop choruses. Candela Soul, from the Bronx, built rock songs on salsa rhythms. And JD Natasha, a teenager from Miami, played straightforward pop-rock songs with Spanish lyrics about the traumas of love, like a gutsier Avril Lavigne.

Latin alternative music still has an uphill climb in the United States. Radio programmers who will play Santana aren't going out of their way to discover musicians like Mr. Garcia, and even bilingual musicians can face a language barrier. But when audiences get a chance to hear it, those barriers can topple.

"I don't speak English very good," Bebe said between songs on Saturday at SummerStage. "No es importante. The music is dancing, don't worry the words, it's O.K.!"

I miss Brooklyn's Caramelize, whose tracks are still on headfullabrains.com (they were a sister band of the still active Maroon, a great young jazz-rock band with some latin elements; more of the latter in another sib, the Benny Lacker Trio, and the city-is-our-drum field/street sounds of J Why and Julz)New album coming from their colleagues Contramano(keep rocking that cello, guys). Also, I just saw this (click on the Charlotte tab at creativeloafing.com--there's a semingly more direct link, but sent through ad alley): Tony Arreaza's the leader of La Rna (tilde in there oops),"the best latin rock band in (Charlotte)...brought rock en espanol to Anglo clubs, with...new song and video, "El Chanchito." Tony is the guy who whips out Slash-meets-Santana guitar solos (h'mm) When he isn't...getting La Rna onto bills with Los Lonely Boys and Los Amigos Invisibles, or (get this) planning the regional rock en espanol festival Carlotan Rock (8/19 at Sk+indalo's [sic]; 8/20 at the Orange Peel in Asheville), Arreaza is contemplating algunas de sus costas favoritas (musicwise, these incl. www.movimientofabrika.com:"Finally, a web page infused with information on the rock en espanol movement in the US and the world! With all sorts of concert, album and video news in both English and Spanish, it is the perfect tool for musicians and fans alike") Speaking of Los Lonely Boys, catch their set with Ronnie Milsap, part of CMT's Crossroads series. They'll be at Farm Aid next month (hopefully broadcast: see farmaid.com) Maybe they'll jam with Willie on "Cisco Kid," like they did on his most recent USA Network special (think they're on the CD of that) Now, if CMT would just add a lot more Latin, who are in *all* CMT's markets, I'm pretty sure (Chuck's even got CMT in Brooklyn now)(hey Steve, come drop some words at freelancementalists again sometime, okay? Thanks for the thread.Vaya!)

Benny L-a-c-k-n-e-r Trio that is (buena "99 Luftballoons"!)And the Slash-meets-Santana bit should have been in quotes; I haven't verified such claims yet.

Those Latin rockers sound whiny and rockist to me with their grumbling about reggaeton.

I never did find that champeta compilation on Palenque that folks in the Beat magazine raved about a year or 2 ago. I haven't heard Andrea Echeverri's solo release yet either(or her version of champeta). I gotta get me some high-speed internet.

So Don, I guess I gotta give Los Lonely Boys another shot. I was underwhelmed by my one exposure to them...

I didn't like them on Austin City Limits, which is a very artist/audience-friendly venue, so no excuses f.u. suck there. But! Good with Willie, and then very good on Crossroads with Ronnie Milsap (and not just when they accompanied him or vice versa, but on their own as well). So now I'm wondering about their Live At The Fillmore (or Live @The Fillmore, maybe--think it's a series; Lucinda's new one has same title). Willie kept referring to them (kind of his proteges, or he's helped 'em, anyway) as "the Los Lonely Boys." Like this publicist that's addressed me as "Doug" for a lonngg time...I thought maybe he thought they were the Lost Lonely Boys--but now I even see them billed as "the Los Lonely Boys" in print!

I wonder what other English language publications or blogs wrote about any of this LAMC event or the concert or club shows associated with it? I didn't see much in my quick google search, nor did I read about it on any of the NY bloggers sites that I look at. The event looked pricey, but I thought some folks might have scored press passes to attend and cover the thing.

Link working now, and movimientofabrika.com turns out to be much more Spanish than English, far as I've looked, but some good stuff. (I'm now listening to new album by deSol, a bit like Los Lonely Boys, whom they've opened for recently, but also can see how they fit on bills with Ivan Neville, Widespread, Israel Vibration--do wonder about those shows with Cracker--)

gotta check out ELJURI from nyc (eljurimusic.com) and BEBE from Spain - these bands kick mucho ass . . .