Rock in Latin America, Latin rock, rock en tu idioma, whaddaya call it?

In class today, we talked about the history of rock and roll (both in English and in Spanish) because our topic was rock music in Latin America (sometimes categorized as "rock en espanyol" and not to be confused with "Latin rock").

Just imagine me as Jack Black in School of Rock, with my flowchart on the blackboard.

I played some boogie woogie and jump blues cuts for the class to show them some of the original sounds, including Big Mama Thornton's version of "Hound Dog" which has a funky latin beat going on. We also recalled the Cuban influence on early music in the U.S. via New Orleans (the cinquillo rhythmic cell was the heart of ragtime). Louie Louie was a cha cha, says Ned Sublette, the author of Cuba and its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo. The story of "Louie Louie" (no comma) is a version of the history of rock and roll: white musicians made the bucks off black musicians' work--and at least some the roots are in what Jelly Roll Morton called "the Spanish tinge"--the clave from Cuba, that is. Richard Berry, a black musician originally from New Orleans, wrote and recorded the song in the mid-fifties, using the bass line he heard in a song called "El loco Cha Cha." A lot of up-and-coming bands in the Northwest played it, and the version that hit No. 1 was by the Kingsmen, a white band, in 1963. In 1989, Berry played a gig in California that was filmed by folks who want to make a movie about the song. I was bummed that YouTube was down today so I couldn't show the clip (what does that say about teaching now?)

I reminded them that Santana used to be a jam rocker with a percussion player from Nicaragua who mixed up the Afro-Latin roots with the blues in a new way, not just the guy who had the comeback song "Smooth." I grew up on Santana's music--too young to go to Woodstock the year their first album came out, but he was from my home town, so we were loyal fans. My high school crowd also listened to Sly and the Family Stone, WAR ( "Lowriders") Tower of Power--the funky Bay Area sound.

So I used the projector to put up the Wikipedia page on the history of Rock and Roll because I wanted them to see how different the English and the Spanish versions of the history are (although they both have their qualities). They started to laugh. I couldn't see what they were looking at, but then they pointed out that between the time when I found the link this morning and class, someone had edited the page so that the first line was "kevin is a penis." Oh, I love the Internets as a teaching device!

UPDATE: VivirLatino waxes nostalgic about "rock en tu idioma"