Rhianna Banana

Rebelde concert review

Maggie, Amarilys, Mike, his girlfriend and I went to the Rebelde concert in Quito last weekend. It was amazing! I just wanted to share Maggie's review of the concert with everyone. She wrote it for the Peace Corps Ecuador newsletter, El Clima:

Every once in a while a music group comes along that revolutionizes music and society in general. Whether it is because of inflammatory political lyrics, other-worldly guitar licks and chops, or a new sound that knocks the socks off the critics, these bands create at the least a new genre and at times, a cultural revolution. Rebelde is not one of these groups; the poppy back up band and the achingly cheesy lyrics are enough to make even an elementary listener of music gag slightly. However, as I held my cell phone screen light up swaying softly to “Salvame” along with thousands of screaming fans in Quito, I couldn’t deny that I was having fun.

First of all, let’s get some things straight. Yes, I am 26 years old and no, I am not still in junior high, but embarrassingly, I must admit that the recent Rebelde concert that I attended in Quito was, you might say, my social event of the year! What an experience, tons of screaming teens and pre-teens and us- three 20 something gringas. A shout out to Ariana of Valle Hermosa and Amarilys of Santo Domingo for accompanying me on this journey of a concert. No, Rebelde would not win any competitions based on talent and certainly are not going to add anything substantial to the Latin music community. But I’ll be danged if that concert wasn’t as fun as tying hogs! (I don’t know if that is really a saying, but neither do any of you so it works). There were crazy hot choreographed dances, pyrotechnics – fireworks shooting into the ceiling of the coliseum keeping time with the poppy beat, the back up band was rockn’ out, and the stadium was filled with the energy of thousands of screaming fans. In other words and also in the words of Miguelalto, lead singer of San Diego’s own Fuzzy Raisins, Rebelde “Ruled”.

Some of you might recall that during Omnibus 95 Reconnect some of my fellow Peace Corps friends and I performed a dance to the internationally popular Rebelde hit “Soy Rebelde”! We are thinking about getting back together for our COS conference next year- I know many of you had hoped for an earlier reunion, but unfortunately we are having a “thing” with our agent and that is the soonest we can schedule anything concrete.

Some of you reading this might be asking yourself, “Does this article have a point?” Well anyone that knows me very well has already realized that most of my stories lack this very important aspect and you of course are not asking this question. But, for the rest of you well, this article is not so much a review as simply a sharing of an experience. I don’t think hidden within this mumbo jumbo is any deep moral truth and although it is tempting, I won’t try and find some unrelated closure to my article by relating it to some unrelated something that is meant to make us all warm and fuzzy inside. But, hey if you get the chance and have a stash of your monthly living allowance that you haven’t used, a Rebelde concert isn’t the worst way you could spend your money!
Maggie
Chuquipata

posted by Unknown @ Friday, April 27, 2007