a story of naive complicity: Rock, Silence, and Survival Under a Dictatorship

It was said countless times that with the military coup of 1976, and its murderous regime, there were artists who had to flee the country. Apparently, the national rock figures were no exception. The exiles of Moris, Litto Nebbia either Miguel Cantilo. Charlie Garcia never left. Spinetta neither. The usual explanation is that the military was too clumsy to understand the metaphors.

Dialogue of this newspaper with Emilio Del Guercioex Almond. Talk topics: politics, rock and dictatorship.

-I read in “Galimberti” about your participation in JAEN (Argentine Youth for National Emancipation). How stubborn were you?

-I didn’t go to Montonero. I supported those ideas, but over the years I realized that no one can take other people’s lives under any circumstances. and under no circumstances. That’s what I believe now. And Montoneros, with some exceptions, has not reviewed what I’m telling you. I still have my ideas regarding Peronism, but I don’t vote for all the ballots that show me with Perón’s face. I didn’t go to Montonero, otherwise he would be awarding me something that, in a certain sense, would suit me well, but it would sound kind of cheap on my part. Yes, I was at the beginning of the JP in the ’70s, initially formed by Rodolfo (Galimberti), where there were really very cool people.

-I was a musician, but we were not yet Almendra. Luis (Spinetta) and I left that political field when we became professional and we no longer had time to go to meetings.. With Luis we were a photocopy: we were together all day from here to there. We met Galimberti at the Las Artes Confitería. We met there. We were 17 years old and Rodolfo was about 23.

-Is it true that Flaco smoked a joint and was kicked out of one of those JAEN meetings?

-It’s not true in any way. They must have put it in the book to achieve a novel combination of militancy-youth-rock-marijuana. It is not true because we, at that time, did not know what a joint was. Luis stopped attending because he lost interest.

-Litto Nebbia once told me that rock’s commitment was not ideological but aesthetic. Do you agree?

-I think Litto is somewhat right. In the case of Aquelarre (band led by Del Guercio and Rodolfo García, two former Almendra) we were already in the aftermath of the ’76 coup, and we had already gone through difficult periods. We chose to go to Spain because we considered ourselves a group that had a roof over our heads here. Nobody chased us. We didn’t give a chance for that to happen either… Litto is right, yes.

-You are a tremendous piece of history, Emilio. That’s why I can ask you: was rock functional for dictatorships?

-It could be, I’m not sure about that. When a thing begins to become more widespread, its real dimension is lost and it stops being a closed thing. When one relives the story and they ask us: “How did you write lyrics during the dictatorship?”it would be comfortable for me to say that we suffered a lot and that then “We did this and that.” But it wasn’t like that: The truth is that we grew up in a situation of dictatorships. It was normal within such an abnormality.

-It seems that rock has not yet reached its stage of revisionism.

-There are paradoxical tools that sometimes work for the benefit of certain things. Rock spread due to the ban on music in English when we were at war with England. This circumstance freed up an area of ​​art production that would not have been achieved in another situation. Sometimes there are undesirable people, like the military of the coup, who accommodate situations that remain in history. Many things about rock would have to be reviewed.

Of the old guard of rock, he may be the type that is most difficult to explain. “I am a second litter with Charliewhich played on my first album: Christ Rock. and with Leon Gieco. Together with León we did a kind of casting at the Arts and Sciences Center. We present ourselves to be authors, composers, musicians. In that center were the Negra Sosa, Vox Dei…It was a place of artistic elite. Of a hundred applicants, only two remain. León and I,” he says. Raul Porchetto.

-Yeah, one day gone. From a recital in Río Cuarto They took me in a Falcon, but since they took me from a place where there was a crowd, the thing could not be ignored. It was in ’81. And furthermore I was threatened and banned in the middle of the Malvinas War. I sang for peace in the Solidarity Festival and they showed me a revolver. The soldiers said that my repertoire was treason to the country. Things that happened and helped me honor each moment. Every day counts. The past is a present and the future is another present. That’s my philosophy.

-We were present at a press conference in which León Gieco admitted that having played at the Malvinas recital was a “shit” that rock made…

-It may be that we have been functional from a place. But from another place, no. before singing some peacethe song with which I closed that recital, they threatened me with a gun. “Today is not for singing some peace”they told me. A lot of friends who knew I was going to do it anyway supported me. And up there, on stage, I said a prayer for all the kids. That attitude, for me, was the most rebellious thing that could exist. Violence has a strategy for everything except an attitude of peace. I believed in that and today there are people who are infinitely grateful for it.

We had to wait until 2017 for Leon Gieco assumed in a press conference that rock could have been “functional” for the dictatorship. When asked about Clarionsaid: “This is a movement that has its flaws and that has been functional as you can be functional by working in a company, and getting paid.”

However, he accepted that it was “a mess” to have played at the Malvinas recital. “I was white, but there was an order to be there. Nothing is perfect and pure anywhere”.

In the book of Rock and dictatorshipits author, Sergio Pujolsays: “The scale of national rock before Malvinas was not what it would have later, and that was, possibly, one of the main reasons for its survival in the years 1976-1982. Therefore, the war, which hid and disfigured so many things, ended up allowing national rock to express itself to previously unthinkable limits. We can then say, with a bit of irony, that 1982 was its annus mirabilis (year of the miracles), marked by fire by the war and the internal policies that it generated, in the midst of a contradictory and at times absurd climate.

They were the producers of national rock, with central figures such as Daniel Grinbank, who organized the Latin American Solidarity Festivalperformed at the club Sanitary Works on May 16, 1982. It is estimated that 60 thousand people attended. Channel 9 and Radio Rivadavia They broadcast it live. The very long show was broadcast without commercial breaks.

Docile, in its usual state between sleep and wakefulness, rock was present with names like Charly García, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Raúl Porchetto, Gieco, Nebbia, Juan Carlos Baglietto, David Lebón, Rubén Rada, Ricardo Souléamong others.

It is true that Virus and The Rapists flatly refused to participatebut Virus (Federico, Julio and Marcelo Moura had a missing brother) was a group that had just released its first album. The Pil y Stuka band still had almost a year to go before releasing their first album. That is to say, the few voices that were really opposed went sadly unnoticed.

Pil Trafaleading voice of Los Violadores: “If rock is rebellious, no one rebelled there” he said. “They pulled up the carpet and put the trash underneath. Except for Spinetta, who felt used, none of them were capable of self-criticism.. Because it was so fraternal, that festival became fratricidal.”

According to Pujol, “what was interesting for rock was not so much what happened in Obras or any other real setting as what happened in the virtual space of radio communication. The latter had lasting consequences. As we know, that changed from one day to the next, literally speaking. A few days after the landing in the Malvinas, radio stations throughout the country stopped music sung in English. This turned American and English pop, which until then was the hegemonic sound of radio music, into forbidden music.”

In the legendary magazine Hairthe chronicle of the concert seemed to be written by a high-ranking military officer. “One of the songs that most excited the audience was The people of the futureperformed by Cantilo-Durietz. There were the ‘people of the future’, those who make up the new generations that will shape the destiny of this country.”.