“Urban music leaves no room for alternative rock and that’s why we go to Mexico”

Something Happened in 2019. Like a Switch Was Flipped, Overnight there urban music invaded the nightclubs, Spotify TikTok and even festival grills, like Viña or Lollapalooza. Where alternative rock, pop and indie music once ruled, today sitting on the throne is trap and urban Latinos.

So much that Santiago has been called “the world capital of consumption of reggaeton ” for the more than 400 million monthly reproductions of songs by Bad Bunny, Daddy Yankee, among others, but also by local artists such as Young Cister, Polimá Westcoast, Pailita or Marcianeke.

Meanwhile, in Mexico City, this type of music is listened to less than half, compared to Chile. SO, Recognized for its vast music industry and for having “a space for all genres”, Mexico it becomes the country par excellence where different Chilean artists aim to pursue their musical career.

Mon Laferte, Pedropiedra, Los Bunkers, Kudai, Benjamin Walker and I fight Gatica, among other things, they started the trend of leaving the country for the Mexican dream. Actually, This last artist, the king of the bolero, in the 1950s, felt that the market for his genre in Chile was too narrow and “wanted to jump into the promised land of the genre”.

I think it’s a fairly old phenomenon. It’s been happening since the days of La Ley, with Los Tres and that’s the Mexican market has two advantages He begins to explain The third Nicolás Emilfork, soloist, academic and artistic director of Fundación Guitarra Viva.

—The first is that it is huge There are a lot of people and that necessarily changes the landscape for you. Second, it’s next to the United States so being in Mexico, one way or another, the North American market opens up to you.

—Everyone at some point in their career felt that they had already reached a certain ceiling, that to continue in these places was to perpetuate themselves around the same places, the same festivals, the same audiences and the same stimuli. You had to pack your bags to grow up — says Claudio Vergara, popular music journalist and editor-in-chief of Cult of LT .

Joaquín Tapia and Mauricio Sothers are two young Chileans who knew from childhood that they wanted to make music. . In the halls of their school in Huechuraba, they dreamed of the day when they would form their own band.

“When you’re a child, you dream of things, but it’s still intangible how that translates into a life project. There’s urge, there’s love and pure passion that gets you started in there, but there’s no roadmap Joaquin tells LT .

Now more adults, in Joaquín’s house —with the help of his father—in the deep hole where the swimming pool was, they built a kind of studio. Within its underground walls, to this day, the songs of kief the name under which, together with Mauricio, they released their first alternative rock song in 2019.

A few days ago they released their latest single, Crownwhich adds to the list of songs they have composed underground. Both say — with a laugh — that more than half of their listeners come from Mexico, although they’ve never played there.

“In Chile, we have given ourselves the time to play in many bars, to do many presentations and shows, and that is something that we really like. Even if It had a much lower impact than what was generated in Mexico. In other words, people showed greater interest in our music in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Puebla and Monterrey.

The two members of KIEF are convinced that their genre—a mixture of alternative rock and indie pop—has its birthplace in the land of tequila, a place where they aim to pursue their artistic career in the future. They feel great affection for their Mexican fans, who are felt despite being miles away and not hearing them live.

And that’s it, Because it’s obviously bigger than Chile, they think that in Mexico there will be more people willing to listen to more varied musical styles.

This is also how the soloist Emilfork explains it.

“The Chilean market is very small. Maybe a lot of people who like urban music don’t know about other genres, so as an artist, you have to see how to expand the offer or the channels so that they have contact with other music different from that which somehow fills all the spaces—, he assures.

“I don’t really think so. We feel that today we can listen to everything. I don’t feel like it’s a competition. Chileans simply prefer urban music but we believe in a super nice phrase that is used in the industry, which is “in music there is room for all genres”, because everyone is free to listen to whoever they want”, says Joaquín, the drummer of KIEF.

– On the contrary. I think the development of the music industry with any genre serves us all. It’s as if the fact that there are more and more massive concerts in Chile means that the whole industry is growing and that involves all of us. those of us who are part of it,” adds Mauricio, who sings and plays guitar and keyboard.

But even so, both musicians know there are more opportunities in Mexico than the Chilean industry can offer, at least right now.

That being said, for Emilfork, there are undoubtedly genres that may have a harder time reaching audiences, compared to urban music, which is trending. However, he firmly believes that artists have to refocus and try to show their music in a much more attractive way for the public.

—You can sit there and say “oh actually, people have changed their tastes and they’ve forgotten about me”, but you have to be very open to the fact that music isn’t just what you do. Music is when it is played and when it is heard. The public must be part of it. If I’m not reaching them, there’s something I need to change, I’m doing something wrong and I need to refocus.

And it is that the numbers don’t lie: urban music steals the show from music platforms like Spotify, YouTube and Apple Music.

-For sure. Today, urban music monopolizes many spaces and some artists more related to indie may decide to move due to the lack of opportunities and diversity offered by the local industry. —, assures the journalist Vergara, in addition to analyzing that this is an emerging scenario, which still cannot have a precise diagnosis.

“It can be shared with relative peace and balance,” he adds.

Moreover, he illustrates his sentence with an interesting scene: the last Lollapalooza in Chile. On one of the stages, Pailita was playing, but a few meters away the guitars of El Cruce were getting louder. On the one hand, Young Cister imposed his conditions and on the other, Benjamin Walker or Yael Meyer did the same on their own stages. All in bars of the same compound.