El Salvador, a small country in Central America bordering Guatemala and Honduras. So small that we don't really have a music scene, due to the fact that artists are unable to grow and develop a live sound. We've had a few musical acts that have generated enough of a stir that people would pay attention but nothing really sticks. The concept of a ‘small local band’ is nothing more than that for us. There are no venues or places for people to play their music live, or promote their music. Most clubs only have DJs (so if you're a DJ you might have a good amount of gigs in El Salvador).
The music played on the radio is completely international, and we have almost no concerts/shows happening. Some of concerts that I remembered happening were of a Beatles cover band that would play full albums (unfortunately I could never attend any of the concerts because I was always busy with school stuff). Other than that you would rarely hear of a show happening or people talking about going to a show. Shows are basically DJ shows, and that's it. With that really not being my scene I've gone to only one concert in my whole life. One time Guns and Roses did come to El Salvador…..but I was around 8 years old and it was an 18+ show.
Another foreign concept is venues. We really don't have place where young artists can go and play their music. Most bars, depending on the type of bar, either have a DJ or just radio playing in the background. There isn't really a space for young musicians to express themselves and show their original art. Sometimes certain restaurants will have live music, but they always take a very classical-mariachi-style of music. The more I think about it we have a DJ/Reggaeton scene that would be found at bars and clubs, and then the classical-mariachi scene in restaurant for the older people.
I would like to end this blog saying that maybe in the future there will be more artists in El Salvador and more venues will start to appear, but I honestly don't see that happening any time soon. I talked to a lot of friends while writing this to get their opinions on this concept and they did confirm that most of the artist from our country end up going somewhere else, mainly in the US, and they grow as artists there. There is no space for musicians to explore and share their music back home, and I wish that would change sometime soon.
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