Rather than respond to “how are you” with “fine” or another mood, José Palace answer with work: “Starting again.” After the festival that he created and is running for the first time in 19 years had to stop due to the pandemic, the producer and businessman is counting down the hours until the curtain rises on the imminent edition of the festival. Cosquin Rock. “At times it is a nightmare and at other times it is a dream”, he confesses about the backstage of the event, which will be held again in person this Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 February at Santa Maria de Punilla aerodrome, located 40 kilometers from the Cordoba capital. “There is a great anxiety not only of the spectators and musicians but ours. It is so much that at times we do not think clearly. Now the only joy and pride we have is that the grid, as we conceived it, with each stage serving as a festival in itself, was more than achieved”.
Keep reading: Useful data for Cosquín Rock
-Did you learn something from the new normality that you have managed to put into practice?
-Nothing should be taken for granted. I learned that in the new normal. Although we never stopped working to make it happen, we were all this time wondering if there could be a festival or not. Things are very fragile and changing, so we look for tools for dialogue and understanding. In our experience, working with some of the artists I work with, the unpredictable is always present. The main lesson that the pandemic show business owners is that we have to program with much less time and think about fewer deadlines. It is also necessary to anticipate alternatives facing some possibilities, and being aware that we are going to be elements and control factors so that people who access an event have the possibility of coming out unscathed from contagion.
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-As soon as the health pass was put into practice, the trolls attacked any festival, room or show in whose networks they warn that the vaccination scheme will be requested to enter. What will Cosquín do with the anti-vaccines?
-Before going on sale, we announced that we were going to control the vaccine because right now there are as many vaccines as there are volunteers willing to give them. We respect all kinds of ideologies, such as not getting vaccinated. But we also respect the rules of coexistence. The only tool there is is the vaccine, and this has shown that it delays contagion, that it does not kill, and that the bug has a very low mortality rate for those who are vaccinated. We have to adjust to that. We do public shows that are regulated by the health authorities. If the municipal, provincial and national state considers that to enter a show of more than a thousand people you have to present the complete vaccination schedule, we will comply Part of our responsibility is to prove that the one who is standing there, as well as the one next to him, are vaccinated.
-The musicians who play both days must also be vaccinated?
-I want to clarify that many musicians, who are afraid of covid and who are vaccinated, what they ask us the most is if the people who will go to the festival are vaccinated. Out of respect for all those who are going to work at the festival, we have to take care of that.
-Apart from exposing the vulnerability of the music industry, what caused the crisis caused by covid-19 was the creation of a kind of “new order”. Some producers switched gears, while people who had never put on a show suddenly started doing it. Did you see this in Córdoba?
-Córdoba is the Mecca of the quartet. Each orchestra is its own impresario, to which are added the dance halls. In the pandemic, we all gathered at a table, after 50 years in which the cuarteteros could never sit together, and we managed to integrate the Chamber of the Entertainment Industry of Córdoba. We worked so that each one could have their value chain as unscathed as possible for when we had to return. We created job vacancies and bags of food, and we assisted the smallest entrepreneurs with a group spirit. No one had to set up a bakery.
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-After the news of the return of Cosquín Rock, were you surprised by the large number of music festivals that announced their grids for this year?
-It’s very logical. Argentina has very few festivals. Cordoba has 246: 200 are from folklore, 20 are from regional music, 20 from something else, and there are about 2 or 3 from rock. There is only one quartet. In the country there should be 20 or 30 big rock festivals. The festival experience is very healthy, because it’s fun and it gives work to many bands. It is important that it grows. If there is a bit of calm, and the bug leaves us alone, I think more festivals will appear.
-In the last two years, the value of a ticket has increased. Did you think of an affordable price when designing the festival?
-We have a ticket that costs 6000 pesos per day. Seeing any of the artists that are at the festival costs around 3 thousand pesos, but with this price you could only see two of the 60 or 70 groups and soloists that we have per date. We always bet on a cheap ticket, and this year it cost us a lot due to inflation.
On his Twitter account, Palazzo shared images of the assembly of the festival. The producer and businessman, together with his team, put together a program worthy of these 20 years. “They even came to shuffle names like Dua Lipa“, recognize. “But in the end the festival was built according to our possibilities.” Although the British pop icon will not be at the celebration, Divided, Las Pelotas, Ciro y Los Personas, Skay y Los Fakires, Babasónicos and Los Auténticos Decadentes will. At the same time, this Cosquín Rock will mean the return of Fito Páez to the event or the debut of Juana Molina.
“There will be nine stages,” Palazzo highlights. “The Blues House became quite a discovery, while Boomerang will have emerging artists, and the new ink will bring together troubadours like Dillom, Trueno, Acru and Wos. By summoning La Delio Valdez, Sabor Canela or Kumbia Queers, we play with flavors and colors that we would never have dared to”.
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Parties in full color: from Los Decadentes to La Bresh
Even if The Real Decadents stage their own festivity (as usual) on the North Stage, at 2:15 a.m. Sundaythe parties, formally speaking, will begin a little earlier on the first date of Cosquín Rock. La Bresh will flaunt why it’s “the cutest party in the world” shortly after midnight at the Paraguay scenario. Preceded in the same place by one of the Argentine electronic sensations: the group rare fish. At the same time, on the South Stage, the French producer and DJ Sébastien Léger will test the pulse of house that is currently cooking in the European nation.
On the following day, once midnight makes an appearance on the North Stage, Mona Jimenez will debut at the festival. Before that historic quartet, the katana party will inject you urban music and reggaeton to the Paraguay Scenario, contributing the share of neoperreo on the 20th anniversary of the event. And the American tandem Boombox will turn the South Stage into a huge dance floor very early, with a nuanced preview on the decks by the Buenos Aires DJ Mariano Mellino. The latter in the Personal Space.
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The electric balls
After Los Pericos, Catupecu Machu, Los Auténticos Decadentes and the Mexican Molotov passed through there, now it will be the turn of The Balls. In addition, it will happen on his return to Cosquín Rock. The band commanded by Germán Daffunchio will have its own stage at the festival, where he will perform both Saturday and Sunday at 10 p.m. The space is not very difficult to identify: it is the only big top what is on the property. Given the doubt that began to circulate in recent days, about whether the performance will be acoustic or not, the group uploaded an appetizer of one of their rehearsals to an Instagram account. There is no doubt that the upcoming show will be intensely electric.
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Record memories: from Ciro to El Mató and Neo Piesta
On Thursday the third and final volume of the albums that celebrate 20 years of Cosquín Rock. These works contain exclusive live recordings (recorded at the event on February 8 and 9, 2020) that attest to the evolution of the festival. If the first of the albums brings together Ciro and Los Persas with Louta, Hilda Lizarazu and Bandalos Chinos, among others, the second highlights Las Pastillas del Abuelo, Las Pelotas, Guasones, Sara Hebe and La Mississipi. Like its predecessors, the third part is already on digital platforms. There are Los Auténticos Decadentes doing “El murguero”, the Chilean Mon Laferte singing “El beso”, the ragpicker Neo Pistea with “Criminal”, and El Mató a un motorizado recreating his hit “El Tesoro”.
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