4 Florecita rockera

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Andrea Echeverri, the female lead singer of the Bogotá-based rock band Aterciopelados. Focusing on her recordings, music videos performances, and popular print media, it examine the ways in which Echeverri musically engages constructs of gender, as well as the processes by which she is in turn framed as a gendered subject within the U.S. popular media and music industry. With a focus on contemporary rock en español and the recent rise of “alternative” Latin(o) American rock, it traces the ways in which music video—a format traditionally understood as a locus of oppression for both women and individuals of color—is transformed into a site for “new forms of resistance and struggle” in the work of Aterciopelados. The chapter suggests that Echeverri, as well as the Miami-based industry in which she maneuvers, exemplifies the music industry's current transformations in accordance with the dictates of globalization, while simultaneously underscoring the gendered/gendering nature of sound itself.