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| Lollapalooza Chile |
Lollapalooza Chile has some parallels with its Chicago predecessor. It, too, is in a big-city park bordered by skyscrapers, though Parque O’Higgins also has a mountain backdrop and a roller coaster full of happy screamers visible behind one stage. It’s a deliberate mix of pop, rock, hip-hop, reggae and electronic dance music, with programs for children (though there don’t seem to be many of them attending) on a separate stage. On the two main stages, the timing is planned so that moments after the final note dies out on one stage, the band on the other starts up in a near segue. Parque O’Higgins also has an arena that has been handed over to the electronic acts and D.J.’s — that’s a big dance floor — and a smaller theater.
That theater, Teatro la Cupula — renamed the Tech Stage for sponsorships — is where some of the better acts have been scheduled, but it’s a logistical work in progress for this festival. It has been packed and then some; when a crowd gathered outside on Saturday afternoon for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, the front lines hurled themselves against a wrought-iron gate locked by security guards. Later there were more security guards and a single-file line waiting more patiently to get in. Having a building instead of an open tent helps alleviate the lack of sound isolation that plagues festivals, but the constant in-and-out traffic of a festival crowd through narrow theater entrances is a challenge.
Latin rock and pop filled the festival’s opening afternoon. The hometown Chilean audience joyfully sang along with Los Bunkers, a long-running Chilean rock band that switches among new wave, pop-punk and updated Merseybeat, setting inner torments to tuneful choruses with the bouncy, amorous yet hard-headed love songs of Francisca Valenzuela. Anita (also known as Ana) Tijoux rapped and sang to jazz and jazz-funk grooves, flinging political challenges with calm determination. Bomba Estéreo, from Columbia, mingled electronic beats and drones with Afro-Colombian rhythms, rock and funk, and in one song, some Congolese-style guitars, keeping up dance grooves while Liliana Saumet rapped and sang about the complexities of modern Latin identity.
English-speaking bands took over midafternoon, barely altering their sets for the local audience. When the dependable reggae band Steel Pulse played “Rally Round,” it used “The Star-Spangled Banner” as an introduction, although Santiago is a long way from the United States.
Still, there was no language barrier for singalongs: not with the very earnest English band James (whose environmental project seems to be recycling U2’s leftovers) or with the Killers, whose older, 1980s-steeped synth-pop and new wave managed its clichés better than more recent material, which tips deeper into melodrama by trying to add some Bruce Springsteen Americana. There was more brooding from the Deftones, whose sorrows are channeled into songs that keep wrenching themselves in different directions: thrash outbursts, rap imprecations, grunge melodies. The National stuck to its less cryptic songs: tales of crumbling romance and deep isolation that fight the stasis of the lyrics with insistent beats and surging buildups.
There was greater cheer on the arena’s dance floor. Latin Bitman surrounded his turntables with a full band, going pan-American as he dipped into samba, reggae and funk; Ms. Valenzuela showed up as a guest. Mr. Farrell and the disc jockey and remixer Chris Cox made booming, muscular beats together; every so often, Mr. Farrell came out from behind his laptop to be joined by his wife, Etty, for the dance-pop songs they have made as PerryEtty. Finishing out the night, Fatboy Slim had three stories of fans dancing to his thumpingly obvious and brutally effective big beat. At any hint of sagging enthusiasm, he played a cappella vocals from big (and sometimes cheesy) pop hits like Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” or he flaunted the four-letter word that appears in his “Star 69″ — again, with no apparent language barrier.
Sources: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com
