Argentina (Part 1)

In Buenos Aires there is no hardcore scene at the moment but recently some bands are appearing. I am in touch with a few bands and bit by bit I want to start generating some movement to bring bands here and maybe do some festivals...

In Argentina hardcore is a style that is very underground. A few years ago there was a resurgence in the city with bands such as:

RECONCILE

ORIENTACION

NUEVA ETICA

EL ETERNO ENEMIGO RIP


The members of these groups were the foundation. They organised the festivals with bands from other places that they knew from different shows. They started to form friendships and then with the help of emails myspace msn etc they began to put on new shows..

Venues for gigs are hard to sort out because the music style is not popular and also because the majority of the crowd don't drink at the shows so the places can't make their money back .... this means that the rent of the places is very costly for the bands .. and in consequence the owners of the places take most of the collection themselves .. what happens is that the bands have to resort to other means to survive....

There is strong brotherhood between the bands and this is reflected in the tours that the bands carry out. A kind of exchange is generated between bands in which many of the groups (often without knowing each other face to face) are invited via the internet to other cities and then they stay at each other houses and vice versa .. so it is possible to satisfy the fans who are a great distance away and to get known out of the usual circuits .. without having to confront the big expense that a tour generates for a band..

The fundamental way for the contact and spread of these bands is the internet. The big argentine record labels do not represent any of the bands. For this reason, many of them have founded their own independent labels to distribute the discs, but also they are busy in some cases with importing material because it is not easy to obtain and is usually costly .. the exception is VARSITYHARDCORE being linked with the singer of RECONCILE.. They affirm that it is not a source of income for them, that the aim is to collect money for putting back to fund future projects..

Both CDs and the merch can be obtained at shows and you find various stands that sell everything from CDs to caps and vegan/vegetarian food. If they do things themselves it is possible to maintain shows, tours, discs and fanzines.

Regards JUANx