This week, Teresa Fraile gave a lecture at the Graduate Center, organized by the Foundation for Iberian Music, on the arrival of rock music in Spain. Fraile is Professor of Didactics of Music at Universidad de Extremadura (Spain), president of Sibe (Sociedad de Etnomusicología), and past visiting scholar at the Foundation.

Her lecture looked at the infrequently explored relationship between Spain and the US when it comes to the development of rock music. Many assume that the Franco regime did not allow foreign trends, according to Fraile, but she argues that in spite of Franco’s reign, Spanish popular music received many varied foreign influences. She looked in particular that the influence that Mexican and Cuban rock bands had on Spain (such as in the music of Los Teen Tops and Los Llopis), as well as the influence that Spanish artists in exile had in Latin America. She also looked at the impact of Chilean broadcaster Raúl Matas, who went to Spain after spending 4 years as a NYC radio DJ  and introduced the country to new music through his show “Discomanía.”

Fraile’s lecture presented only a small part of an ongoing project to examine the development of popular musics in Spain as it “awakened to modernity.” To further wet your whistle, check out Rock Around Spain: Historia, industria, escenas y medios de comunicación, edited by Kiko Mora and Eduardo Viñuela (Universidad de Lleida, 2013), with a contributed essay from Fraile.