Music, cinema and identity: the “case” of rock & cat.

Abstract

During the 1990s, in Catalonia some musical groups emerged under the common denomination “Catalan Rock”, a name which designates a false style, but was defended as such by government agencies and record companies. In 2006, the director Jordi Roige made the film Rock Cat, which gave legitimacy to the “style” with a documentary that includes performances of groups that were part of “Catalan rock”. These performances were filmed expressly on a common stage, the Liceu opera house in Barcelona. Our work aims to show how a documentary film about music allows for institutional legitimacy of a style that never really existed, despite the indisputable quality of the film.