"Music worth burying?" Colombia's enduring love of rock and heavy metal music
💬 Fandom, 'metaleros,' and rebellion against hopelessness: unearthing Metallica and a parable against purism with author Chucky García
One of the many (many) surprising things about Colombia is its enduring rock and metal culture. Walking around cities like Bogotá and Medellín, it is hard not to notice the multitude of leather jackets and old-school rocker hairstyles, album cover t-shirts, and bars with screens dedicated to playing old concert footage - volume up to eleven.
So, today - an interview with writer Chucky García about these genres and their subcultures: how it got here and why it has taken such root in Colombia. It’s a story closely bound up with the violence the country suffered in the late 20th Century, and the instinct to feel, express, and rebel against hopelessness.
We chatted about hardcore fandom, gatekeeping, and inspiration - from Juanes to Metallica, and Joe Arroyo to Miley Cyrus. We also talked about Chucky’s new book: a memoir about his first contact with heavy metal and the start of a lifelong love of music.
EH: Chucky, your book starts with an amazing duo of anecdotes - one in which you set fire to a part of your school, another in which you first hear Metallica. Both moments expressed a need to ‘watch the limited world around you burn,’ as you put it in the book…
Both stories are evocative of small town life at a very different time in Colombia, but also of the random ways in which we stumble across things which end up changing our lives. How did your love of music unfold from these early moments?
CG: I discovered Metallica through cassette tapes buried in the front garden of a stranger…
I was visiting family in Cali as a teenager and we went to see my cousin’s friend, known as ‘El Pollo’ (‘The Chicken’). His mum had forbidden him from listening to that kind of music, so he buried the cassettes in the front garden - we had to wait for his mum to leave the house so we could dig them up and listen to them.
The timeline of everything, and how it unfolded - those cassettes in that garden all the way through to getting Juanes to play the ‘Rock in the Park’ festival - it entails so much randomness and coincidence. I wanted to reflect that in my book.
Even as I was writing the book… I wondered for a long time where to start, but one day I was walking in Bogotá and a bike passed me - very close - then the guy stopped, took off his helmet, and said “…Rascanigua?” It’s a small firework used by children at Christmas - it’s also what I used to get called back in Neiva, Huila, where I grew up.
He was an old school friend, someone I hadn’t seen in 30 years. He reminded me of the school and the fire - and suddenly I knew that was the start of the story… Most of those priests who ran the school must be dead by now, so I figured it’s fine to confess that story.
These genres have been a huge influence on your life, but metal and rock have also been a huge part of the music scene in Colombia, despite being imported genres - or at least not having roots here - how did that happen?
There was a romanticism to metal in the early days - it was less about rebellion and satanism than about authentic representation, finding something which expresses who you are, which you connect to.
And in many ways it was about fandom: it never made me leave the church or stop being in the choir, it was about finding community, getting to know people with the same interests as me.
Bogotá is very oriented towards towards thrash metal, and bands like Metallica, Anthrax. In Medellín they prefer heavy metal. There is metal on the coast too, though mostly the Atlantic coast: Cali is a very metalero city - one of Colombia’s iconic metal bands, Inquisition, is from Cali. Our other iconic band is Masacre, who are from Medellín.
And rock and metal still have an amazing hold on Colombia’s small towns - in municipalities in the Coffee Region or in Pasto - even while facing much greater adversity than you face dressing like a rocker in big cities. In small towns, in Nariño for example, they love black metal.
You have to ask… How? What portal did black metal pass through to get from Norway to a small town in Nariño?! There’s an crazy connection between the Andes mountains and extreme metal genres from Europe… What do we have in common?
Those Scandinavian countries which are big producers of this music and the high Andes have climate conditions in common to some degree. Do you think the cold has something to do with it?
There is definitely a link with cold climates… But in cities like Cali and Medellín, what the cold didn’t do, violence did.
The development of metal music goes hand in hand with the violence of the 1980s and 1990s.
Medellín was the cradle of ultra-metal during that time - a parallel development to black metal in Scandinavia, boosted by the exchange of cassettes and zines - even letters, written by hand which crossed the Atlantic.
But while in Scandinavia the music was about paganism and the relationship with nature, in Medellín it was about chaos, death, people disappearing - saying ‘this is what we are living through here.’
We were taking refuge in this type of sound: it created a kind of protective shell, to resist, to endure what we were living through - all the death and chaos.
And, of course, the paisa ultra-metal sound was pretty different in the end - the artists didn’t have studios or money: their instruments would be home made, they’d even solder their own microphones, record in basements or bedrooms. It became its own category.
So this music was a way to directly confront that violence, to leave behind the folkloric and the denialist modes of expression - and look the contemporary situation right in the face?
Definitely - it was way to confront that violence, and to find a way through it - that’s so important.
I remember being scared - at the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s - there were car bombs all over the place, shootouts, murders everywhere. But if there was a metal concert, you went anyway, you’d get brave and get out of your house. And you’d connect with people who felt the same.
And we were a youth which felt there was no future in many ways: economic, political - of power in any form. That underlying fear in this country that whoever had the guns was going to end up in charge - fears which take hold of a society.
This music was a way to survive that moment without disconnecting - still being present. There were other scenes, like salsa or electronica - but an electronica party was like an isolated capsule, while with metal you felt like were receiving information and processing it - via music, via lyrics, even via aggression.
And it has lived on.
I go to the centre of Bogotá a lot, where all the classic record shops are - I see people buying the same vinyls as ever, or in bars they’ll put on videos of old concerts and music videos of rock bands - it’s often Iron Maiden, Kraken - the real old school. In Bogotá, metal culture is also kept alive by small local venues, local zines and festivals.
I’d say it’s a kind of nostalgia - returning to the good old times… but those times in Colombia weren’t so great - so maybe it’s more about returning to the ‘real ones’ - the classics, the old school.
Maybe it’s even some resistance to reggaetón or other mainstream culture.
These genres often seem closely linked with resistance or rebellion - but how can success be reconciled with being part of counter-culture?
There’s an expression here for rockers who stop being radical - ‘casposos’ which translates as ‘dandruffy’… People might say, “They got dandruff…” It’s a way of saying they sold out.
The only band who didn’t suffer those accusations was Kraken - but they got stuck in middling success, much like paisa ultra-metal band Masacre - their success never got much beyond Colombian borders.
But Juanes crossed that frontier and got international success: he’s the perfect example of this trajectory, I think. He started in a rock band, Ekhymosis, and passed through the same stages as Metallica - a first album, black and white photos, long hair, more rocker-style.
But then you really reach your peak as you cut your hair and maybe branch out a bit, find your way back to your roots…
You get some success and, paradoxically, doors start to close.
And then you get criticised for not being ‘pure’ any more, and the genre itself closes the door on you - basically punishment for your success. Just like with Metallica’s ‘Load’ and ‘Reload’ albums, which are really rich musically - a lot more is explored there.
You invited Juanes - an international icon mostly seen as a pop star - to play the Rock in the Park festival in 2019. It was a pretty controversial move at the time, but he ended his set with a cover of Metallica’s ‘Seek and Destroy,’ which was a huge hit at the event as well as online… How did all that come about?
By total coincidence! I found myself face to face with Juanes in Mexico at the Vive Latino festival. We hadn’t seen one another in a long time - and I thought maybe that was the moment to invite him, as I was curating Bogotá’s ‘Rock in the Park’ festival at the time…
But when I invited him, he wasn’t sure I was being serious. He rang his manager right there - and I was panicking because as a public festival we don’t have the resources to pay someone like Juanes his normal rate - but he was like, “Yeah let’s do it!” We skipped the normal negotiation and all the normal rules.
I never thought he’d be so excited - we swapped numbers and at 8am the next day, he wrote to me. Before Rock in the Park, Juanes had not played a single Colombian rock festival - with 30 years of career with his rock band Ekhymosis and as a solo artist. That’s crazy.
He was worried about how he would be received - a successful artist going back to his country - and there were a lot of memes.
But it did bring people to Rock in the Park - people’s mums came with them, taxi drivers knew who was headlining - this was the first time. Having Juanes there put the name of the festival in a lot of new mouths.
At Rock in the Park there’s a quota for local bands, so a lot of less famous bands have played.. And in the ten years I headed up the festival, not one local band wrote to me as much as Juanes did, asking about songs he should play, collaborations, all of it.
Before going on stage, he showed me his setlist and said, “What do you think?”
I saw Metallica there, ‘Seek and Destroy,’ but in brackets in case there wasn’t time, he said, knowing the festival is super strict with timing - all bands, whether local or global, have exactly the same slot. But this time, I said not to worry about it and I told production to let him play.
So he ended up playing that Metallica cover - and it was really impressive. Metallica themselves said that it was the best cover they’d ever seen.
Weeks later, I was in Peru giving a workshop. I want back to my hotel and put on the TV to kill some time: it was the Grammys…
And it was Juanes winning Person of the Year, being given the award by the drummer of Metallica, Lars Ulrich himself.
Purism is something which these subcultures often foster - but you invited Juanes to play at Bogotá’s iconic rock festival, and Metallica themselves end up declaring themselves Juanes fans…
Your book is, I think, a parable against that kind of purism - where do you stand on gatekeeping, genre, and fusion?
The great thing about Colombia is that it’s impossible to be purist about music - that’s been my great conclusion, at least: fusion and openness are cultural here.
Even a rich kid from Bogotá who goes to an elite school - that kid will still hear music everywhere he goes in this country: all day, music will be present everywhere - vallenato, metal, romantic salsa, a huge mix. You can’t avoid it, you get permeated.
In my day, before the digital era of music, the greatest musical education was the public bus - and in Bogotá, the journeys are long - imagine the number of songs you’ll hear.
And now we are living through an amazing period of live music here - I would never have thought this could happen. In the 1990s, nobody would come here, you could count the big concerts on one hand.
One year, among a full line-up of metal artists, I invited a Mexican cumbia band to play the festival - I had to confront two petitions which were trying to change the name of the festival from Rock in the Park - because it supposedly wasn’t rock any more, we had ‘distorted’ the notion of what rock was… A bizarre fundamentalism.
We beat both petitions. And it has always been a diverse festival - a reflection of the city itself. In the end, Bogotá is a multicultural city, a city of migrants - you turn on the radio and hear a huge mix of music.
But more than that: where do you expect the raw materials for a pure rock festival to come from? The headliners for big festivals are the same bands as ever - Slipknot, maybe Rammstein - and the national bands are the same ten bands too. And the same ten regional ones…
Where is the material for the festival, that you want to be purist about? Where is the replacement for Aterciopelados, for example?
It’s interesting to me that in the teams of artists like Maluma, Karol G and J Balvin there are loads of people from the world of metal: sound engineers, managers, people who used to do heavy metal concert production - really heavy stuff.
I run into them occasionally, flying first class, but they’re still wearing black, listening to those bands. Karol G and J Balvin’s sound engineer is a friend of mine - he made his name in metal.
But can rock and metal survive without a nonconformist identity, that sense of rebellion against something?
In the old days, in the 1990s underground scene, you would end up with desmadres: police, stone-throwing, tear gas, fights - all that.
But I think now people behave very differently - it’s changed a lot… It’s more lightweight now - it’s still cathartic, but it’s more about partying.
Though he’s from the world of salsa, Joe Arroyo was the first real Colombian rockstar - he lived all the sex, drugs and rock and roll… A genius who never had formal training but created 300 songs - and ended up with a really political role. I worked on a project about him which ended up as something as an anti-biopic.
Now, if you destroy a hotel room, they’ll charge you for it - and then expose you on social media. And then your fans go off you.
We don’t give our artists the right to do whatever they feel like any more: there’s no taste for that vision or lifestyle any more really - no validation for the groupies and the drugs and the libertinism.
We talk about poor mental health and substance abuse now, we don’t glamorise suicide any more. Now when you look at Kurt Cobain, you think, ‘Shit… How did nobody see he was depressed?!’ - how was nobody seeing it from the point of view of mental health?
Is there space for the rockstar life, as it was before? I don’t think so.
So that sense of rebellion, that rage of youth and spirit of adolescence, where has that energy gone?
It’s a great question - you look at metal and punk concerts and a lot of them are the same old rebels as always - the younger kids are in the minority…
I wonder if the younger generation might be venting online, alone. That, or maybe just pure partying - la rumba pura.
You even realise now that it’s banks who sell us tickets for rock concerts - often with pre-sale tickets, you have to have an account with a certain bank, like Grupo Aval. It’s not about queuing all night, waiting ten hours, fighting in the queue.
And I thought we were in agreement that banks are bullshit - but something even as sacred as music is sold to the system itself.
The most political thing recently is that the Cure saw that their ticket prices were being inflated by big ticket sales sites, and they refused to sell their tickets with their sites - finally a band putting a company in its place.
But generally, there’s no anti-capitalism left.
You can feel that vibe - that spark - in someone like Kendrick Lamar, in some hip-hop, even in some electronica, like early Aphex Twin… Miley Cyrus has the most incredible rock voice out there right now - there’s real beauty in how her voice has matured. Amyl and the Sniffers are a great band too.
But the future of this genre is the museum, I think - somewhere you go to remember what it used to represent.
It doesn’t fit in this world any more.
… So what can we hope for now?
We need music worthy of being buried in the earth - like those first cassettes of Metallica in Cali. Buried, then dug up, pirated, and shared…
So that’s the real question here… Where is the music worth burying?
Chucky Garcia is a metalhead, journalist, writer, scriptwriter and cultural manager: born in Cali, raised in Neiva, based in Bogotá.
He has written for media outlets including El Espectador, Rolling Stone, Esquire and Arcadia.
Between 2014 and 2022 he was artistic programmer and curator of the ‘Rock in the Park’ festival in Bogotá, Colombia.
Chucky’s book, ‘Master of Puppets,’ is the essential read to understand the early days Colombia’s metal scene. Chucky writes about how, as a teenager, he unearthed a cassette of the Master of Puppets album from a backyard. It was via this music that he began to forge his personality - already showing signs of nonconformism, pushing at the boundaries of his small-town origins.
