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| Artwork by Alonso Ayala (@ouchal) |
Yes, the rumours are true. Your favorite groundbreaking, tastemaking, and Bunbury-hating Iberoamerican music publication is getting back together one more time (Avengers-style, you could say) to bring you our own best-of-the-decade extravaganza.
In a few weeks, we’ll be publishing a series of essays that will reflect on some of the most relevant trends, scenes, genres, and artists from the past ten years, written by Fonograma contributors and a few special guest writers. And, of course, we’ll be sharing a full list of our favorite songs and albums of the 2010s, where we’ll get a chance to rediscover and discuss all the great music we championed back in the Fonograma days, as well as review some of the best stuff that’s come out these past few years but weren’t able to cover ourselves.
But right now, it’s time to get emotional.
As you probably know, the present site is simply an effort to keep the full original Club Fonograma archive alive, online, and accessible to everyone. Club Fonograma went silent and offline in early 2017 without a proper chance to bid farewell, and without being able to fulfill our wildest dreams of hosting the Club Fonograma Music Festival somewhere. The site always existed as a labour of love (in other words, without anyone ever getting a paycheck), so it became difficult to remain as an active publication once adult life and responsibilities got in the way for most of us.
This is why we wanted to take this opportunity to give, first of all, a huge thanks to our readers, from those patient enough to read our 600-word eulogies on low-key indie Argentine acts, to those who really only gave a shit about the compilations, and even to those who stopped reading after we published a diatribe against one of their favorite rock en español legends. Your love and fandom (and occasional hate) kept us going for a very long time.
We’d also like to thank our families, for constantly reminding us of the importance of getting a college degree amidst our plans to take a sabbatical year in Santiago during our peak obsession with Chilean pop. And of course, we’d like to thank all of the amazing musicians who blessed us with so much great music through all these years, especially those who ever showed a token of appreciation for the glowing and gushing reviews we wrote about them.
But more importantly, we’d like to thank Carlos Reyes, for kicking off and helping to keep alive such a unique place for as long as we could. A place where we were completely free to write about music and culture in our own terms, and in front of a wide, diverse, and international audience. If Club Fonograma ever got to be as influential as we think it is, it’s because of Carlos’ remarkable abilities as a prolific writer, editor, tastemaker, and curator.
Throughout the years, Carlos managed to grow this small personal blog into a publication with writers from over 10 different countries, hand-picked by himself, and that, to this day, we still call a family. So a big thanks to all of its contributors: Paulo Correa, Jean-Stephane Beriot, Andrew Casillas, Juan Manuel Torreblanca, Blanca Méndez, Pierre Lestruhaut, Enrique Coyotzi, Adrian Mata Anaya, Reuben Torres, Giovanni Guillén, Souad Martin-Saoudi, Claire Frisbie, Sam Rodgers, Glòria Guso, Jeziel Jovel, Monika Fabian, Cheky Bertho, Marty Preciado, Pablo Acuña, Stella Vásquez, and Zé Garcia.
Stay tuned for our recap of the decade. And as Eros Ramazzotti would say: gracias por existir.