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The people will be
heard
That is the romantic opening of La Lechera (The Milkmaid) by Los Pibes Chorros (the Thieving Lads), frontrunners in Argentina's new tropical music scene, dubbed cumbia gangsta, hard cumbia or cumbia villera - slum cumbia - played by and for kids from the sprawling shanty towns. Originally from Colombia, cumbia has traditionally been a sickly-sweet, anodyne affair for dancing couples. But now, says, Juan Costas, a producer who pioneered the new sound, cumbia tackles subjects like "the social crisis, police violence, thieving politicians, people dying of hunger and the lives of the marginalised - and the fact that no one listens to them".
They do now. Combining punk attitudes, reggae beats and the macho aggression of hip-hop and rap, cumbia villera CDs are shifting by the truckload (with bootlegs at three pesos - about 50p - outselling the legal discs) and the major bands have won fans in Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. Fabian Gamarra of Yerba Brava (Wild Weed) says his band, while less lewd than Los Pibes, plays "the music of the people, of the underclasses. We've always had to sing songs about love, domestic tiffs and betrayal, when what we wanted was to scream out about the reality we were living. We've annoyed a lot of the traditional bands, who lost support." The phenomenon began in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, badlands of high-rise housing, rambling corrugated iron-and-cardboard shanty towns and rutted mud roads streaming with filthy rainwater after the frequent storms. Kids hang around smoking dope, taking a line or two, sniffing Poxiran glue or working - collecting cardboard from the bins, selling pens, begging. It is here that cumbia villera started and where most of the gigs take place. Yerba Brava, Los Pibes and the other shanty bands sing about cocaine, grass, booze, sex and football fandom. The mood of the songs is cocky and ribald. But, says Gamarra: "Our audiences live the same lives as us and understand that they can have fun dancing even while hearing the truth." No doubt there is incisive social comment lurking even in the megahit by Damas Gratis (Women Free), called I Can See Your Thong. But more telling are the songs that threaten to attack and even kill the middle-class chetos (snobs) and to rise up in violent protest and raze the gated neighbourhoods where the wealthy live. The media have given more attention to the tragedy of the middle classes, suddenly broke and jobless after the collapse of the banking system, and the cumbia singers want to remind everyone that they have experienced misery for years. Yerba Brava penned their National Cooking Pot Protest song on December 22, the day after the masses took to the streets to force then president De la Rua to stand down. "We're all broke/ teachers and old folk/ The work schemes/ Robbed us sweet/ There's no bread to eat... let politicians quake in their boots/ Because today the people will be heard." As the crisis spreads, so the cumbia villera audiences grow, and even detractors lend an ear. Gamarra says: "Now politicians, the white-gloved robbers who buy votes from the villas by handing out bags of rice and sugar, are asking us to play at their rallies so that they get bigger audiences." The establishment doesn't like it. The official radio authority, Comfer, has issued guidelines to help out-of-touch DJs find their way through the street slang used in the cumbia villera and has told them to look out for words "associated with the taking and trafficking of psychoactive substances". Cumbia producers are calling the long-winded document "censorship". Even liberals like popular folk-rocker Victor Heredia are sceptical about the new sound and its streetwise argot: "More than a class war, they're the outcome of the economic policies that have devastated [Argentina] and are the products of the marketing we've sold out to. Increasingly we use more vulgar words; we analyse less than ever and blithely accept mediocrity." But the idea of the outcast protester has a noble lineage in Argentine music and arts. From gaucho songs and literature (including the national epic Martin Fierro, about a fugitive gaucho), through tango, folk and national rock, there has long been a dissenting voice coming from outside - whether that outside was the country or the outskirts of the city. The new cumbia is for the 21st-century equivalents of Peron's "shirtless ones", but it is unlikely the old iron-handed general would have liked it - he banned the songs of sardonic tango writer Enrique Santos Discepolo. One leading new cumbia artist, Gonzalo Ferrer of Guachin, classically trained and a devout Christian, claims his songs reflect his experience "working with disabled kids, drug rehab groups, alcoholics and living in the villas and accompanying the cardboard collectors to hear their stories. I give a percentage of all my royalties to recently freed prisoners to stop them committing crime again." He says the politicians and business community could and should do the same. But, whether the message is hedonistic, happy-go-lucky or delinquent, there is a dark side to the tropical nightclub scene. While cumbia is just a social thing for the millions who queue to enter the clubs, the musicians are thought by most Argentines to be managed by a mafia-style caucus who cream off most of the takings. Bands and solo stars play half a dozen or more gigs each evening. When I tried to talk to one bandleader, a TV star known as La Tota, I was passed to a lawyer who told me the man only gives interviews for a fee, like Maradona. However these young artists are packaged and used, their popularity goes beyond nightclubs, TV shows and record sales. When racing down a highway in June 2000 to make his next gig on time, one superstar, Rodrigo "The Stud", crashed and died. Over the following few weeks, thousands of fans flooded to the scene of the accident to build a shrine and the singer was sainted overnight. Earlier this month, more adolescent hysteria was unleashed when Rodrigo's 20-year old friend and backing singer Walter Olmos blew his brains out in a Buenos Aires hotel while, according to local police, "playing with a .22 revolver". Violence and despair, it seems, are central to the cumbia phenomenon.
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