This is our first real encounter with a phenomenon that will be with us for years to come, the middle-class attempt at a Serious Rock Statement. A quick overview of Latin American culture, unforgivably simplified, is probably in order here.
Most of the Latin Pop we've encountered so far has been descended from two traditions, which is really one tradition: folk music and show business. (The American equivalents would be blues/country/r&b and Tin Pan Alley/Broadway/Hollywood, respectively.) This is complicated by the fact that the Latin Pop industry encompasses two continents, several dozen countries, and innumerable local cultures; but the general principle, that Latin Pop is traditionally a vehicle for poor, working-class, and marginalized people to achieve wealth and fame and adoration even if only briefly, holds. (This is also true in American pop, from Jersey punk Sinatra and Tennessee hick Presley to blue-collar Madonna and white-trash Britney — pop is dominated by people who have a story of transcending their origins to tell.) In contrast, rock has been the music of middle-class respectability since at the latest 1967, and even more so in Latin America, where only the well-off have the resources to really get into American and European music. Despite what some will tell you, rock has never really been a international lingua franca, remaining a symbol of aspirational, and even elitist, cosmopolitanism while dance music and, more recently, hip-hop have been more solidly identified with the masses of any nation.
Which is probably several conclusions too many to draw from the fact that Franco De Vita sounds like he wants to be Billy Joel, up to and including the use of an American-style gospel choir for his Serious Statement Ballad. I call it a Serious Statement Ballad because it is; even if I didn't understand the words, the video would make it plain that this is hectoring pop in a "Cat's In The Cradle" mold. The title and two-word refrain translates as "it's not enough,"and the list of things which aren't enough — bringing them into the world out of obligation, taking them to school, buying them what they want you to buy them, blushing and running when they ask about sex, punishing them for being out late — adds up to a public service announcement to Talk To Your Children About Drugs And Bullying. It's all very middle class once more, and even if Latin culture was particularly in need of De Vita's message (Latin fathers are traditionally authoritarian and unapproachable, like all traditional fathers) the wussy piano-rock makes it clear exactly what strata of society it's being pitched to.
Someone like Ana Gabriel could have sung this song with a big synth-mariachi backing and been far more successful both politically and aesthetically; for Franco De Vita, it was his big moment in the spotlight, the highlight of an earnest singer-songwriter career, and the moment in the concert when all the lighters come out.
This is also true in American pop, from Jersey punk Sinatra and Tennessee hick Presley to blue-collar Madonna and white-trash Britney — pop is dominated by people who have a story of transcending their origins to tell.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's especially true - and extreme - when the origins are middle class, viz. Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, David Johansen, Crocus Behemoth, Dave E. McManus, Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell, James Chance, etc. (And of course the audience for what was marketed as folk music was predominantly leftist, middle class, and Jewish.)
(Of course, one might object that my list of middle-class purveyors of American pop that transcends one's origins has a distinctive dearth of popular hitmakers. So you can substitute the Byrds and the Doors and Jefferson Airplane for some of those if you'd like.)
ReplyDelete