Though only one band spoke or sang (at least in part) in English, the Rock en Espa±ol bands on the Watcha Tour, which capped an evening of the Latin Alternative Music Conference Monday at New York's Irving Plaza, proved language wasn't the main barrier keeping Latin-themed bands from breaking through in the U.S. -- it's the nostalgia factor.

Sure, fans chanted "culero" (literally "asshole," but idiomatically a Mexican way of saying "get on with the show") and jeered "Where's de musica" (Spanglish, self explanatory). But outside of a few phrases here and there, the music -- and subsequent mosh pits during headliner Molotov -- needed no translation.

The problem with characterizing Rock en Espa±ol as a separate genre -- simply because of the language it's predominately sung in -- is that it does a disservice to the breadth of musical forms the bands transverse. It's just too ambiguous a title -- a better name might just be the one the conference title suggested: Latin Alternative. Argentina's Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas, for one, are predominately funk-disco-lounge with a bent for Prince. Austin's Vallejo have a spastic energy that could easily cause them to be mistaken or marketed as a straight-ahead alt-rock band (hold the Spanish). And Molotov's blend of rap and rock is a dead ringer for a younger Beastie Boys (for their crassness) and Rage Against the Machine (for their sound).

But that's the thing -- each one immediately causes countless comparisons to spring to mind, as if a Mexican band couldn't exist without its American counterpart. These bands might be the top of their field in the Latin arena -- and outside of it as well, as Vallejo won top honors at the Austin Music Awards earlier this year -- but that doesn't always translate. For all their spunk, Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas came across like a patchwork funk cover band, with bits of their songs seemingly borrowed riff for riff from Earth, Wind and Fire or P-Funk.

Vallejo fared no better, as their brand of stadium-ready alt-rock was so rooted in the Eighties, it almost seemed generic. The lead singer, who apparently had just recently discovered the crotch grab, exhorted the crowd en Ingles and en Espa±ol, using terms understandable even to those only familiar with the Speedy Gonzalez school of Spanish. Though the most American of the bunch, Vallejo sounded best when they allowed their modern rock grooves to fade away for a bit and let the Latin rhythms at the songs' core seep through.

But outside of opening act El Manjar de los Dioses, most of the bands -- besides language -- seemed to obscure their Latin influences. El Manjar celebrated their cultural differences, using traditional forms of dance, modernized for the occasion, of course, to bring out its players (bandmates emerged from under the dress/skirt of a large puppet-like character wearing a death mask as a veiled dancer twirled around them). The music at points was graceful; the dancer, sadly, was not. Her herky-jerky motions distracted from the band's slightly tango-tinged jangly, layered guitar work.

Though Latin rhythms are somewhere within Molotov's incendiary rock, they're damn near impossible to discern. Not that anyone was trying to, since the crowd remaining at this point seemed more concerned with creating clusters of pits, hijacking nearly the entire floor of Irving Plaza. As Molotov raged (about what? Does it matter?), the crowd chanted back in unison "mundo latino" and "puto," the first a celebration of community, the other a derogatory insult for women. What the two phrases have in common wasn't clear, but they both seemed to be used in good humor, as a conga line on stage with members of the other bands of the evening formed as a result. That, more than the banner of Rock en Espa±ol, gave the indication that these bands were united in any way.

JENNIFER VINEYARD
(August 18, 2000)