Aterciopelados

Aterciopelados are the band that put Colombian rock on the world map, and one of the most important that rock in Spanish has produced.

Led by the unmistakable voice of Andrea Echeverri and by Héctor Buitrago, they took rock and punk and crossed them with traditional Colombian and Latin American music —bolero, cumbia, the rhythms of their own land—, creating a sound that was mestizo, irreverent and beautiful.

But they were not just a band with good songs. They were a voice of conscience, feminist and pacifist, in a country that had spent decades bleeding out in war.

They have been going for more than thirty years, and they are as relevant now as at the start.

From ceramics and hardcore to an immortal band

The origin of Aterciopelados is an improbable mixture, and that is exactly why it works.

Andrea Echeverri studied Fine Arts at the Universidad de los Andes and specialised in ceramics in England. She was a ceramist: she made pottery, not music.

Héctor Buitrago came from the opposite world. In 1986 he had co-founded La Pestilencia, a legendary hardcore punk band from Bogotá, where he played bass.

They met in 1988, started going out, and put together an earlier group, Delia y los Aminoácidos, and a rock bar in La Candelaria called Barbarie. The bar did not last: the police closed it in October 1990 after complaints from the neighbours.

Out of that union of the sensitive artist and the furious punk the band was born, around 1992. That double root —the delicacy of art and the rage of punk— is in everything they do: songs that can be tender and ferocious in the same minute.

After the debut, "Con el corazón en la mano", came "El Dorado", in October 1995, and they exploded all across Latin America. Out of it came anthems that have never stopped playing: "Bolero falaz", "Florecita rockera", "Candela".

MTV Latino adopted them, they toured the whole continent, and little by little they became synonymous with Colombian rock. They have won four Latin Grammys, and in September 2001 Time magazine put them on its list of the best bands in the world, alongside Radiohead, U2, Sigur Rós and Portishead, describing them as a mixture of alternative rock, electronica and Colombian folklore.

Not bad for a ceramist and a punk from Bogotá.

The name comes from a reading

The name "Aterciopelados" has an origin that says everything about the band, and almost nobody knows it.

They did not pick it as a pretty word at random. As Andrea Echeverri herself has told it, the inspiration came from her readings of Simone de Beauvoir, the great French feminist philosopher, while she was studying art at los Andes: an image about the velvety passion flower that she liked so much she took it to name the group.

It is worth saying this carefully and in her own terms: the phrase is known through Echeverri's account, and no source has managed to identify in which work of Beauvoir's it appears. It is her reading and her memory, not a located quotation.

Before that they had considered names like "Viscosidad Estable" and "Mariachis en la Cárcel", so the choice was clearly deliberate.

And there is something of Beauvoir's that is documented on the firm ground of her work, and that marked Echeverri just as much or more: what the philosopher writes about how restrictive clothing limited women's physical capacities.

That a Latin American rock band should name itself this way is no accident: it announces, from the name itself, that inside there is a woman's gaze, cultured and combative.

A woman's voice, and a voice for peace

And there is what makes Aterciopelados great, beyond the songs.

Andrea Echeverri gave rock in Spanish something that was missing: a woman's voice that asked no permission, that sang about love and heartbreak from her own place, that made fun of machismo, that stood up for the body and for women's freedom on a continent that was still very conservative.

"Florecita rockera" is almost a manifesto: a woman who does not fit the mould and who celebrates it.

Andrea fought those battles when they were far less popular than they are today, and she opened the way for a great many women artists who came after.

But there is another, even deeper dimension. Aterciopelados made their music in the Colombia most battered by violence —drug trafficking, the guerrillas, the paramilitaries, decades of dead—. And instead of looking the other way, they sang for peace.

Their songs denounced the violence, called for reconciliation, put a soundtrack to a country that wanted to stop killing itself. In 2007, Amnesty International named them Ambassadors of Peace, above all for their denunciation of violence against women. The following year, the same organisation chose their song "Canción Protesta" to build "The Price of Silence", an anthem for human rights.

They were not just a rock band. They were a moral voice in the middle of the horror, singing to their country that something else was possible.

What to remember

They are still going. In 2024 they won the Latin Grammy for best rock album for "El Dorado (En Vivo)", the record on which they revisited their masterpiece thirty years later, with guests like Carlos Vives and Rubén Albarrán, of Café Tacvba.

If you put on "Bolero falaz", "Florecita rockera", "El Estuche" or "Baracunatana", you are going to hear Colombian rock at its best: guitars and punk crossed with the rhythms of their own land, Andrea's cheeky, sweet voice, lyrics that laugh, that stand up, that hurt.

A ceramist and a punk who came together in Bogotá and ended up putting Colombia on the map of world rock, who gave women a voice in a man's world, and who sang for peace to a country at war.

Few Latin American bands have been so good and, at the same time, so necessary.

Sources

Aterciopelados, Colombian rock band from Bogotá, led by Andrea Echeverri (vocals, guitar) and Héctor Buitrago (bass). Echeverri took a master's degree in Fine Arts at the Universidad de los Andes and specialised in ceramics at the Plymouth School of Art and Design, England; Buitrago co-founded the hardcore punk band La Pestilencia in 1986 together with Dilson Díaz, and was its bassist. They met in 1988, formed the earlier group Delia y los Aminoácidos and ran the rock bar Barbarie, in the La Candelaria neighbourhood, closed by the police in October 1990 after complaints from neighbours; Aterciopelados took shape as such around 1992, and their debut album, "Con el corazón en la mano", was recorded in 1992 and released in 1993. According to Andrea Echeverri, the name is inspired by an image about "the velvety passion flower" coming from her readings of Simone de Beauvoir during her art studies; the attribution appears in the Enciclopedia Banrepcultural and in El Tiempo, but no source has identified the specific work of Beauvoir's in which the phrase would appear, which is why this text records it solely as Echeverri's account and not as a located quotation. Before that they had considered names such as "Viscosidad Estable" and "Mariachis en la Cárcel". Echeverri has also pointed to the impact on her of what Beauvoir writes about restrictive clothing as a limitation on women's physical capacities. Their second album, "El Dorado" (24 October 1995), gave them international reach with "Bolero falaz", "Florecita rockera" and "Candela"; "Baracunatana", a version of a song credited to Leonidas Augusto Plazas Pérez, belongs to "La Pipa de la Paz" (1 November 1996), and "El Estuche" to "Caribe Atómico" (1998). They have won four Latin Grammy awards: Best Rock Vocal Album for "Gozo Poderoso" (2001), Best Alternative Music Album for "Oye" (2007) and for "Claroscura" (2018), and Best Rock Album for "El Dorado (En Vivo)" (2024), a record that featured Carlos Vives, Natikumbatá and Rubén Albarrán, of Café Tacvba. Time magazine included them on 15 September 2001 on its "Best Bands" list, alongside Radiohead, U2, The Brilliant Green, Sigur Rós, Portishead, Tarika, Pato Fu, Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers and Orishas. In 2007 they were named Ambassadors of Peace by Amnesty International, and in 2008 their song "Canción Protesta" was used by that organisation in "The Price of Silence". Rolling Stone placed their album "Río" among the ten best of Latin rock. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Banrepcultural, El Tiempo, Wikipedia, Infobae, Remezcla, TIME and other press coverage.