Outside Lands 2012: Where the Latinos at?

In previous years, Outside Lands Music Festival, in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, included some of the biggest names of the Latin Alternative scene in their line up. Manu Chao, Café Tacvba, Nortec Collective, Los Amigos Invisibles, Aterciopelados, Os Mutantes, Kinky, Julieta Venegas, Ana Tijoux, Rodrigo & Gabriela, Mexican Institute of Sound, and Ximena Sariñana have all been featured in an usually diverse and balanced line-up.

2012’s edition, however, had Colombia’s Bomba Estéreo as the only artist singing en español. There was also a noticeable lack of hip-hop acts on this year’s lineup, but we’re not gonna get into that. I’m not saying this was a conscious conspiracy in favor of whitey, but yeah, at moments it kinda felt like that.

So, with Bomba Estéreo as the only act of explicit Latino interest, I had plenty of time to kill during the rest of the three-day festival, and I set out on a where’s-waldo kinda mission, in search of the concealed Latinos hiding in the fog.