Mexico City’s Indie Rock, Now Playing to the World

“IN the 1990s to be an alternative rocker in Mexico City usually meant a few specific things. You made music about the unchecked chaos of your home megalopolis. You threw the occasional lyrically coded stone at corrupt politicians and corporate media clowns. You embraced traditional Mexican music but then turned it inside out using ska or hip-hop or your favorite goth moments from the Cure. And most important of all you sang in Spanish. You made music that had its ears open to the world but that could have come only from Mexico City.

A decade later the city’s musical ethos couldn’t be more different. Thanks mostly to the downloadable avalanche of globalization and the rise of MySpace the current independent rock scene is full of artists who may be from Mexico City but sound as if they could be from New York, Stockholm or Paris. “There were bands that lived by a checklist of what it meant to be a Mexican rock band,” said Armando David of Chikita Violenta. “Now everyone is throwing that checklist out the window.””

Stumble it! | |