Warm air filled the car as my dad swerved down the heart of Portland’s lesser-known suburbia, Beaverton. Though charming for its quaint name and more wholesome Portlandian image, the small city center was filled with cafes worthy of national attention. Any time our busy schedules would align, my dad and I set our tradition of attending one of these cafes together; each coffee trip further indoctrinated me into becoming a pretentious coffee snob. Conversation accompanied our morning iced lattes, and our current music rotations always became a primary topic.
My dad and I were on our way back from our ritual one particular morning, and as the momentum of his swerving pulled me back and forth, he played a song that felt like the same warm air wafting through the car. Drums, chimes, and synths swelled; in the background, a faint operatic wail haunted the melody—as if they had been forgotten. A melancholic suaveness oozed under the male singer’s velvety voice. An occasional record scratch would interrupt the song’s hypnosis.
Nonetheless, I was bored with my dad’s song selection.
I begged my dad to let me handle the aux. Surely a high school sophomore of the ‘indie’ variety could educate the older generation on what it really meant to be a ‘musichead.’
Instead, like any parent seeking an opportunity to turn a conversation into a lecture, he began to rave about the Argentinian rock legend behind the song. He replayed the song and deconstructed the meaning behind each line. Every thirty seconds, there would be a “Do you get why it’s called Bocanada?” followed by a “What he’s trying to convey is-” or a “There’s a double meaning behind this- you should work on your Spanish more too so you can pick up on this.”
For months, I never understood exactly why Gustavo Cerati resonated with my dad so much. Though I couldn’t deny that Bocanada was a testament to Cerati’s lyricism and silky mixing, I wasn’t ‘clicking’ with his artistry the way I felt I should.
My dad would continue to tell me the rockstar’s story over several coffee runs, road trips, and dinners until he felt I had it memorized.
For many children and adolescents in Latin America, Cerati represented the Latin American spirit of revolution that was rampant around the 80s and 90s. While his early life was not marked by battles or violence (as we’ve come to associate with revolution), his free spirit was nurtured by his peers’ free-thinking (enhanced by a little bit of weed) and the opportunity to travel. Slowly, his knowledge of music expanded as his record collection grew. Led Zeppelin and The Beatles began to make appearances on his shelves. Cerati hit upon a quintessential preteen experience: a musical awakening. Suddenly, the boy was aware of the various sounds that whirled through the air on the streets and yearned to create some songs of his own.
At this point, my dad would compare the development of his own music taste with Cerati’s and state that the only difference was that Cerati was now one of the household names in ‘Latino America.’
Only a few years later, Argentina would undergo a political change supported by the United States often termed el Proceso, where the government’s integrity crumbled under a military dictatorship in which the country’s armed forces appointed leaders. Cerati would be forced to serve time in the military before continuing his pursuit of artistic liberation.
But before Cerati could develop his solo career, he would meet Zeta Bosio at university in 1979––shortly after his brief government intervention. The two communications majors immediately delved into discussions on American and English new-wave rock, emphasizing the importance of globalization in the music scene. As they delved further and further into these conversations, it became glaringly obvious that the two needed a rock and roll outlet. They performed together in bands named The Morgan and Stress, covering songs and performing some originals.
It wouldn’t be until sometime later that Cerati and Bosio found their third band member. Charly Alberti––back then known as Carlos–– was infatuated with Cerati’s sister, Maria. She had zero interest in going out with a wannabe drummer trying to follow in his dad’s footsteps, but Carlos’ sound was exactly what the duo needed. Brought together in 1982, the three would later become a global phenomenon.
“Same year I was born” my dad would say.
For Argentina, however, the band’s formation coincided with the fall of military governance only one year later in 1983. While not a directly political band, the three would come to represent a new age of rock and resistance.
And so Soda Stereo was formed, named for Cerati’s addiction to any sweet carbonated drink. They saw their first, self-titled debut album in 1984. Soda Stereo was an ode to the music the three had grown up with. Namely, The Police’s influence could be heard on each track, with ska, a genre originally from Jamaica, being mixed in as well. The stereotypical ‘sad’ British pop rock wrangled against ska’s sunnier beats. While the album captivated some audiences, other responses echoed the initial thoughts of El Zorrito, the occasional keyboardist for Soda Stereo, who said their name was odd, ‘pop,’ and unserious for a rock group.
However, skeptics quickly realized that the band’s unconventionality was part of its charm. They weren’t trying too hard to present themselves as pseudointellectual alternative music. Instead, their lighthearted name added a kind of sincerity to their experimental sound. Cerati would often describe the band as a “hairstyle and three people.”
It must’ve been one hell of a hairstyle.
Soda Stereo gained incredible momentum, and the band blew up.
The term ‘Soda-mania’ was coined, rightfully comparing the band’s commercial success in Latin America with that of the Beatles. They weren’t mimicking Anglo-Saxon music, but each bassline and cymbal was festering with the spirit of their Spanish-speaking continent. Each crescendo in every track built upon the anticipation fans felt across the hemisphere. Soda Stereo was becoming a pioneer of a new sound that nobody could pinpoint yet.
Here my dad would continue to gush about how great the band was, deciding to play one of his own Soda Stereo records if we were sitting down for dinner. He’d proceed to tell me about how incredible it was that a band from Argentina continued to accumulate fame until even a 7-year-old street vendor from Mexico knew about Cerati. My dad would explain how selling gum on the street at such a young age exposed him to different songs blaring from all sorts of car radios. He’d skip around Soda Stereo’s career timeline until he got to his personal favorite album, released after the band’s peak in the 90s, “Comfort y Música Para Volar.” The MTV Unplugged album had earned a spot in my dad’s vinyl record hall of fame. Track number five was etched into his brain.
Following years of praise from acclaimed Latin American artists and a lineup of impressive albums, Cerati poured his soul into the 1995 album Comfort y Música Para Volar. While the album as a whole wouldn’t be the same without Alberti and Bosio’s talents as musicians, ‘Te Para 3’ showcased Cerati’s ability to convey universal emotions through deeply intimate lyrics. Even so, the lyrics remain vague, following three unnamed figures sitting down for tea; the singer pours his own despondency into each note. Metaphors lay between the few lines sung, with Alberti’s guitar taking over the latter half of the ballad. A piercing melody lays the final nail in the coffin. Spanish fluency is not required to know that Cerati had mutated his moments of despair into sound waves and poetry. One could imagine the singer pouring listeners their own cup of tea.
It would later be revealed that the song was one of loss. The three figures described were Cerati and his parents reading a diagnosis confirming his father’s cancer.
Cerati’s father would die soon after the release of the album.
“Doesn’t that just completely change the way you listen to the song?”
Although Soda Stereo had completely changed rock’s sound and put Argentina on the map at this point, they disbanded in 1997. Their international acclaim was truly phenomenal, though they had yet to break through into the English-speaking market (mainly due to American rock subcultures being wary of a band that only sang in Spanish). Only the digital age would draw the American market towards the band a decade later.
Cerati continued to leave his impact on the music world, molding his solo career into one distinguished for its innovative blends. Years of experience allowed the artist to homogenize vastly different sounds from various other genres into his masterful sonic experience, Bocanada. Although many other albums before the turn of the millennium attempted to tame aspects of electronic, hip-hop, jazz, and rock to compress them into a disc, none could do it as well as Cerati, who was consistent across every track. The 1999 solo album was not his first release, but it would be the one to set him apart as a visionary.
Little teases of Cerati’s vocal runs and falsetto start the album, taking a traditional ‘Latin’ sound and coating it with a psychedelic ambiance. Each song is a stark contrast from the last; the artist challenges his listeners to identify all the different ways he can produce a signature ‘Cerati’ sound. His fusions build up a feeling of nostalgia for something that perhaps never existed, as if reaching for different memories to falsify a new one. Themes of reminiscing, love, and spirituality develop across the album until the final track. Stripped of lyrics and presented as curated rawness, Balsa gives the audience an incomplete feeling of closure. It’s a sound similar to a spinning record on a loop— long after an album has finished—oscillating endlessly while the needle jumps over silent grooves.
Cerati died on September 4, 2014 from previous health complications originating in 2010.
In the latter year, while on tour in Caracas, the artist suffered a stroke, and would not be treated until 10 am the next day. The Argentinian artist would soon fall into a coma, losing autonomy over his mind and body. A blood clot in his brain would prove to be fatal four years later.
While it was known that Cerati was in a coma, listeners everywhere held onto the hope that his medical battle would be overcome by his brilliant mind. Every country in Latin America experienced a collective and unexpected shock. It was understood internationally that a legend had died at only 55 years old.
But no legacy is accomplished without eventual loss.
After losing my own dad unexpectedly, I contemplated for days about what it meant to have a legacy (and I still do).
The last time I was able to talk to my dad in person, we spoke about Soda Stereo at dinner before returning to college. Despite my complaining 3 years prior, I had grown to love Cerati with a fondness that went past artistic appreciation and delved into nostalgia. When my dad talked about his passion for Latin American rock, I could see his youth reflected in his eyes. I imagined him hearing the same voice I was now hearing, thinking about the timelessness of music.
Cerati left a legacy that is recognized now in circles beyond the Latin American continent, and rightfully so. While the rock legend can no longer physically produce music, traces of his impact can be found in modern-day music. Each new experimental sound invokes the spirit of Cerati and his refusal to be seen as a pretentious poseur.
“Bocanada,” the title track of Cerati’s 1999 album, will (in my eyes) forever be evidence of the legacy he sought. Translated literally, the word is mouth-nothing. In English, it simply means a puff of smoke after a cigarette. The singer expresses a feeling of loss, wishing that the cloud of smoke between two people could be dispelled by words left unsaid. He’s left without any closure, wishing he could have communicated his emotions before a black cloud served as the sole proof of the other.
The air is always unclear after a loss, following the frustration of knowing that what’s left unsaid won’t be resolved. But legacies are left behind, same as the smoke from Cerati’s metaphorical cigarette break.
Gustavo Cerati’s legacy extends past his influence over pop culture and into the homes of those who listen to him. His voice is alive in the long-lasting memories he provided for individuals seeking to solidify their own legacies.
When I get the chance to drive by the streets of Beaverton in search of 16 ounces of my favorite iced latte, I play Bocanada in its entirety. With each word drawn out by an occasional vibrato, I let warm air waft into the car once more, imagining Cerati’s own ‘bocanada’ flowing with his audiences.
“Una historia sin final.”
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