Please note this is an old page and Fly Global Music has now moved. Please follow this link and search for the entry in the new site.

Last Friday night, Gustavo Cerati and company performed at Shangri-La Asian Bistro in Caracas’ Sambil shopping mall. Cerati, Leandro Fresco and Flavio Etcheto gave their first full-length concert as Roken, a new electronic music project from the Argentine trio. Cerati has played with Fresco and Etcheto for many years, having recorded his last album, Siempre es Hoy, with them before touring together to promote the album.

Cerati came into stardom as frontman for Soda Stereo, the larger than life Argentine rock band that broke up in 1997. Since then, Cerati has developed a stellar solo career. He has come out with over a half-dozen albums, receiving wide critical and popular acclaim.

Cerati has employed electronic music extensively in his solo career, yet never devoted himself to an electronic music project—until now. Roken represents the logical conclusion to a process Cerati undertook when he began seriously experimenting with electronic music. Still, Roken isn’t meant to be more than what meets the eye: three guys jamming and having a good time with some laptops and some machines.

Music is music

According to the trio, Roken came about accidentally, yet naturally. “The idea arose during our United States tour,” said Cerati. “We would get together to make music in our hotel rooms. Because of the fun we had, we decided to give it a name.”

Asked if the group represented something formal, or temporary, Cerati stated that Roken is derivative. Fresco and Etcheto have been playing with Cerati for a while, and it only makes sense that they would eventually create something new. According to Cerati, “It’s not formal, or informal.” He might add that “it just is.”

The name itself comes from Dutch. At a club in Santo Domingo, the group noticed a poster with “no smoking” written in many different languages. The idea struck as Etcheto smoked underneath it. They add that “Roken” might not exactly mean “no smoking” in Dutch, but the idea is the same.

“Smoking identifies us with that name,” said Fresco. “The band’s really about taking advantage of the time on tour. Things emerge, different products appear. We’re open to whatever comes.”

The trio rejects all conventional explanations. They don’t want to box themselves in, or give others the excuse to do so. Everything — the idea, the band, the music — stands open to change.

“Roken started as a completely electronic project with laptops in hotel rooms,” said Cerati. “But the project has to be explored. It can change. We have the embryo of the thing, and we already have things that define us as a group.”

As a dedicated and skilled musician, Cerati gets frustrated by questions that seek cut-and-dried answers. Music doesn’t provide such answers, he seems to say, and imposing such narrow criteria distorts music’s simplicity and openness. When it comes to electronic music’s highly misunderstood nature, Cerati has little patience.

“I like to explore different things, including my pop vibe, rock. Electronic music isn’t ‘electronic music’ as it’s understood,” said Cerati. “There are no differences. They’re just conventions.”

Making music with machines can’t be exactly the same as making music without them, however. Indeed, Cerati reveals as much while drawing a bridge between different musical methods.

“As far as the song format goes, things that we do transform themselves into songs,” said Cerati. “They represent products of a musical dialogue where each contributes.”

Cerati also acknowledges that some of Roken’s electronic music creations “lack the structure of a song.” He would no doubt add that whether one calls them songs, no-songs, cows or reindeer, they are what they are. Their essence supersedes their labels.

In many ways, Cerati and Roken point to something new and vital in Latin American culture. Absorbing global influences and exploiting what’s theirs, young Latin Americans are creating wholly relevant artistic expressions. The relevance of this work lies in their expression of the local and global social and cultural contexts that frame them. In this vein, Cerati and Roken stand alongside Mexican rockers Ely Guerra and Julieta Venegas, the new cinemas in Mexico and Brazil, Venezuela’s Los Amigos Invisibles, Chile’s literary bad boy Alberto Fuguet and a host of others. Roken acknowledges the connection, but again, with some ambivalence.

“There is no intention to fuse musics,” said Cerati. “You just come upon it. In Buenos Aires, we absorb things as we do on trips.”

“The music’s more universal. It bases itself on concepts that can be handled in Hong Kong and Buenos Aires,” said Fresco.

For Etcheto, their type of music might point to some “planetary folklore” from which all can equally borrow and to which all can equally contribute. Globalization certainly gives that illusion, but these artistic expressions remain decidely local. In any case, talk is cheap. Just tune in and decide for yourself.

Roken in concert

DJ Metra spun some excellent dance numbers to set up the crowd for this new and much-anticipated electronic music act. Roken’s performance started out a little slow as performers and crowd alike got their bearings. The crowd didn’t know what to expect from a Cerati-driven electronic group. When Cerati incorporates electronica into his solo work, his quietly intense voice gives the music vitality. This time, machines and laptops took over.

The performance gradually picked up and before long the crowd that had pushed up to the front was grooving to the blend of electronic tricks, including samples, synthesizers and Fresco’s computer-manipulated voice. For those new to electronic music, it must have seemed bewildering to see three guys playing with laptops and music machines to create a medley of sound. Like most artistic innovations, however, electronic music isn’t so much a break with the old way as a new take on it. Everything comes from somewhere else.

Roken’s most impressive moments recall the reasons why we like electronic music. Not because it’s electronic, but because it makes us move, it makes us dance, it makes us happy. Good music does that. In such a saturated electronic music market, it’s often hard to find anything that stands out. It’s too early to tell if Roken will achieve a lasting or an original sound. We should bear in mind, however, that Roken’s nature is experimental, and as such, they have a lot of playing around to do. Anyway, they’re not in it for anything but good times, for themselves and for us.