This past July marked the third annual Ruido Fest in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Also known as “noise” fest in Spanish, this three day music festival brings some of the coolest artists and bands from Latin America to Chicago. Think Lollapalooza, but with headliners from Chile, Peru, México, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Turning away from the traditional cumbia, salsa and merengue music of their parents, this festival caters to a new generation of Latin American listeners. Marketed as “Latin American Alternative,” Ruido fest features artists playing punk, hip hop, electronic, reggae and everything in between. This new generation of artists defy cliches and stereotypes in Latin American music and culture, allowing them to make music that is new, creative and exciting.
While Ruido Fest is a relatively young festival, it has gained a large following over the past three years and has even become a household name among many Latinos in Chicago. I believe that this rapid growth and acceptance of the festival is indicative of the immense cultural need for an event like this.
Ruido Fest is a solution to a cultural divide in U.S. Latino culture. It creates a much needed space for Latinos who feel as if they don’t fit in with mainstream Latino culture (salsa music, reggaeton, telemundo, etc). Minorities are often told that they have to culturally stick together to be able to survive in this country. That there is not room for minorities to be complex or divided. That diversity and subcultures are only reserved for white Americans. But this type of thinking only dehumanizes groups of people and turns them into stereotypes. Ruido Fest challenges this by allowing Latinos to express themselves in diverse ways.
Ruido Fest also addresses a divide in American youth culture, where black and white voices are often heard, but those of brown or Latino youth are rarely given an opportunity to speak. While Lollapalooza features little to no Latino artists, Ruido Fest creates a space where those voices are put first.
The creator and mastermind behind Ruido Fest is Eduardo Calvillo. Calvillo is a forty-something radio DJ and event organizer based in Chicago.
Calvillo has hosted Rock Sin Anestesia, a Spanish-language radio show featuring Latin American Alternative music, for over twenty years. The show airs weekly on WLUW (Loyola’s Radio Station!) In the twenty years of hosting this show, Calvillo has interviewed countless artists from Latin America and spoken with many Chicago listeners calling in to the show. Through this method of informal research, Calvillo learned a lot about the Mexican American and Puerto Rican communities in Chicago. With this information in mind, Calvillo started curating and organizing shows with Latin American bands for Chicago audiences throughout the late 90s and early 2000s. These would be some of his early creative accomplishments, while Ruido Fest is his career’s greatest product.
Calvillo’s creativity lies in the research and curation of events - knowing what the Latino communities in Chicago want and also how to get it done. Ruido Fest is going on it’s fourth year now and according to an article in the Chicago Tribune, “it is here to stay.”
The success of the festival can be seen in its replication in other U.S. cities over the past 3 years. In 2016, a music festival called Rock Fiesta popped up in Quartzsite, Arizona, and this past summer witnessed the first Los Dells Latin Music Festival in the Wisconsin Dells. Both of these festivals are sonically and aesthetically very similar to Ruido Fest. Ruido Fest has also been praised by peers in the field. Alt.Latino, a National Public Radio show revolving around Alternative Latin American culture, covers the festival every year and applauds its curation and design.
The next Ruido Fest will be taking place in July 2018, and all Loyola students should definitely check it out for themselves!
Sources:
I really enjoyed this post! I have heard of Ruido fest, but never thought about its social implications. That is, its important role in helping the young chicago latino population own an identity that isn't confined or constrained by U.S. expectations of traditional latino culture.
ReplyDeleteOne of art's most important roles, I think, is its ability to redefine and even forge new cultural characteristics, and Ruido fest certainly seems like an assemblage of artists and musical acts who are doing just that.
Also, what an impressive human is Calvillo. He's like an expert party planner motivated by diversity and inclusion. Pretty sweet.
Hope I get to go next year!
This was a really interesting post. I enjoyed the discussion on the subcultures and divergent likes in minority culture. I think we definitely tend to view minority groups as entirely homogeneous, and that's a very narrow-minded viewpoint
ReplyDeleteThis was so interesting to read about! I've never heard of Ruido fest, but it sounds super cool and definitely something I'd like to check out in the future! I also think it's really important that you addressed the lack of representation of Latino culture in the US, as well as those of other minorities. I'm really glad Ruido fest exists as an opportunity for Latino people to express themselves through music. I think there is definitely a tendency to generalize minority groups to a specific stereotype, and it's important to acknowledge that that is simply not the case.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this, I kept thinking about the topic of marginality that we spoke about in class. In the case of Calvillo, his outsider point of view was instrumental to his creation of Ruido Fest and it is because he is an outsider as well that he is able to understand the complexity of his Latino audience. Although, it is unfortunate that Latinos tend to be marginalized in our society, it is amazing to see how they are able to overcome that in such creative ways.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting, I never really thought about the internal diversity in the Latino music.
ReplyDeleteIt is amazing how Calvillo saw the demand and creatively supplied to it.
To put it in Smith and Ward’s terms, he noticed that there was a lack of diverse Latino music, he then took something old, like the idea of Lollapalooza, and created something new, something different, the Ruido Fest!
Lastly, thank you for addressing the brown community in your blog. It is in fact true that minorities are often either overlooked or stereotyped in the mainstream pop culture, and addressing them is the first step to bringing attention to the issues among them.