Last winter, the Arctic Monkeys toured to South America, a place many bands can’t afford to visit. They’ve visited the continent twice before to tour, but on last year’s six-date trip they played, for the first time, in the same arenas Miley Cyrus, Metallica, and Justin Bieber have recently filled.
The high costs of getting there and then figuring out transportation has long made rock tours across South America a rare thing only the uppermost could afford, but an interesting combination of economic advancements and heightened consumer interest are changing the landscape and turning the continent into an important revenue source to the music industry.
The Arctic Monkeys courted Latin audiences when they cast telenovela actress Stephanie Sigman in their video for "Snap Out of It". Sigman, who also appeared in the now-canceled FX show "The Bridge", has a huge presence across Latin America. That casting is part of a coded language the Monkeys have tapped into that helps them speak to Latin audiences.
To promote their album AM, singer Alex Turner created a character for his performances, a man with slicked back hair reminiscent of a rockabilly look, who wears leather, looks hyper-masculine, and sings highly emotional songs. Most of the album’s lyrics revolve around a dysfunctional relationship. University of Texas Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture Jason Borge says this "dark, sneering, gothic and rebellious" image has held appeal for Latin Americans all the way back to the early 20th century. But Brazilians, in particular, have a unique cultural relationship to this band and rock music in general.
When the Arctic Monkeys played Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, they headlined at the HSBC Arena, where the 2016 Summer Olympic basketball games will be held. The venue holds upwards of 18,000 people for concerts, but that fraction, Borge says, is likely to largely consist of a specific sect of Brazilian society.
"[Brazilian] middle class kids, young people and intellectuals, mostly white, establish street cred through their embrace of foreign popular culture," Borge explains. "It allows them to perform or display a rejection of the status quo, particularly if they're embracing rebellious-seeming celebrities like James Dean or Elvis or Mick Jagger."
Improvements in telecommunication infrastructure, a surge in smartphone sales, and an inclusion of "takedown notices" in the nation’s recently adopted net neutrality bill have led to huge popularity for digital music services including iTunes, Deezer, Spotify, Rdio, and VEVO, all of which launched in the the country in the last three years. Music videos in particular have become a popular tool for music discovery in Brazil, according to entertainment lawyer Martin F. Frascogna. "Brazil is a very visual market. A lot of people there are finding new global artists via YouTube and other video outlets," Frascogna says. "That's not necessarily the same in other markets, like Argentina or Mexico. Putting out interesting content on YouTube, along with their recently revealed ‘tip jar’ feature, which hasn't been fully embraced by the industry yet, is going to allow artists much more of a revenue stream in that particular region."
There are very few developed markets where digital download sales are growing. In the U.S. they declined in 2013, in favor of streaming music which grew 39%. Brazil, a country that only got their own iTunes store at the end of 2011, is one of the few countries capable of generating serious revenue from a declining sales market for record labels.
Many rock bands below the Arctic Monkeys' level of international success cannot afford to tour South America because the distances between metropolitan areas require flights. Small- and mid-level rock acts have a harder time breaking even by touring there, even if the demand is high. An exception to this rule is Peter Murphy. He tours South America regularly, playing mid-sized venues a step below the sports arena level but bigger than a local club. In September of 2014, he spent a week playing six shows across several South American countries.
Murphy’s booking agent at Rocky Road Touring, Joady Harper, says that although this booking might seem unusual on the face of it, booking an artist in Uruguay is no different than anywhere else in the world. The one tricky part about South American tours, she says, is money.
"Everybody’s got some South American horror story," Harper says. "That hasn’t happened to us because I have somebody on the ground there who knows the lay of the land. That helps me eliminate a lot of issues. I also insist on full payment up front, a week before any of the shows. Otherwise, we don’t go."
Harper explains that volatile economies in various South American countries can affect the value of the U.S. dollar, the currency in which she insists her artists be paid. When local currency takes a dip, promoters and venues sometimes find themselves unable to pay previously agreed upon guarantees to artists.
One refrain about South America is sung by all: that the audiences are incredibly enthusiastic, paralleled by no other place in the world. Before Murphy’s final tour date, in Lima, Peru, a fan posted the arrival time for Murphy’s plane to his Facebook page. Upon his arrival, 100 to 150 screaming fans were waiting for him, the kind of scene one expects to hear described when One Direction touch down anywhere in the world.
We’re left with the question of aesthetics. What about the Arctic Monkeys and Peter Murphy connect with Latin American audiences? (Obviously not their accents.) A cursory look at their catalogs, however, shows a similar type of presentation. Their dress is slightly more formal than your average rock band. The songs are emotional. The videos are dark in subject matter and sometimes shot in black and white. Could it be that simple?
"In a general sense, Latin American youth culture is more formal," Borge explains. "Another interesting phenomenon to take a look at would be the theatrics of chicano rock. There's a look—the hip-hop look with baggy clothes—that's taken from zoot suits. It's 1950s Mexican American culture as expressed in L.A. and El Paso."
From the time it was imported from the U.S. to Mexico and then beyond, rock music has connected with Latin audiences. Elvis’s sexualized dance moves didn’t shock and scandalize the Latin audience quite as much as Americans. In his book Refried Elvis, Eric Zolov explains this by pointing to the Mexican culture’s lack of fear of intermixing races in the late 1950s and 1960s, as compared to the U.S. What was seen as an offshoot of black music by Americans was familiar already to Mexicans, who "were raised on close cultural ties to the Caribbean and a passion for música tropical."
As the barrier of lack of Internet access fades, access to smartphone technology increases, and the entrance of viable digital music marketplaces and streaming outlets become a reality, Latin America has become a breeding ground for music discovery—and profit. A continued uptick in standard of living, however, is required to ensure that an audience for "dark, sneering, gothic and rebellious" rock music is a reality with room to grow.