At 19.00 in the afternoon, David and Yoily, 34 and 23, occupy the seats of the reserved next to the DJ table. They have paid a thousand euros for being in this privileged place. “And don’t make me tell you what the babysitter cost me,” he says as he presumes two tattoos: a ball with skewers in his hand and a skull biting a rose on the back. They are the two symbols of the radical disco. Saturday night, one of the music temples bakalao In southern Madrid, he held the last orange party on the deck of Leganés, his most emblematic session with which he has been inaugurating the summer for 25 years. “This is fucking my life, as if they ended my youth. I’m going to be here until you throw me,” says David. Before, his wife will get on the stage to dance. “Last year I made it pregnant,” Yoily acknowledges. “My son hit his first party in the belly, he was born Bakala”, He finishes.
For many of the more than 5,000 people who almost complete the capacity this is a historical moment. They know that they are the last ones who will dance at the Radical Orange Festival that in the late nineties connected Madrid with the Costa del Levante in an extension of the Bakalao route. In the populations of the south of the capital, a circuit of great discos that gathered thousands of lovers of this type of music that has had as many names as generations have gone through these rooms were also known as the destroy route: Bakalao, Makina, PokyCantaditas, Tecno, Commercial Electronics …
Around these discos a social and cultural phenomenon was created that arrived in Madrid already marked by the closure of the Valencian premises and the consequent stigma of the massification, drugs and violence that was rigged to the Bakalao route. The television of the early 2000s also did its share when the culture of the outskirts as something marginal in the collective imaginary. It was easy to identify in the kids dressed in Chevignon’s clothes, Londsale, up up and a lot of gold complemented an example of the chungo.
The figures of these events and the oral history that have been composing who years later continue to go to parties like Radical try to dismantle the official version that criminalized them. “There are always some notes that pass and for those few we pay all,” says Luis, 56. “Not everyone comes to get high, here is a good vibes, it’s like when you go to your grandmother’s house: you feel affection and desire to hug,” explain Laura and José, a 40 and 43 -year marriage of Parla and Getafe that they have left their daughters with whom they have been able to because, they say, they did not miss it.
Since the end of the nineties, the disco and its sessions have moved by Alcalá de Henares, Pinto, Rielves and Torrijos for different circumstances, many of them linked to their first promoters and their constant problems with justice.
The passage of time has helped them claim some respect. The orange party closes 25 years later, as it started, DJ Marta recalls, which this Saturday, as in recent decades, is the only woman in the poster: “This party burst from the beginning.” The expression is not an exaggeration, the aforements did not usually control as today and the premises could put up to 15,000 people every night.
The promoters, the DJs and the public who have been part of the orange phenomenon do not deny that drugs were consumed or that at the beginning of 2000, the entrance of shaved heads AGAR SOMEIGHT. But in his memory what David de Radical, his first and main speaker (He who encourages the party with the microphone from the cabin), calls “a feeling.” It is something like the conviction of having belonged to “a family” or “an event”, two of the most repeated words. “I met all these in the radical paraching,” recalls Pablo, 40, next to his colleague Javi, better known as Wallof 43, which has come from Valladolid.
With the beginning of summer, the Temple of Music Bakala He summoned his faithful, made them dressed in orange, gathered their best DJ and organized a celebration of more than 12 hours in which Gogós mixes, streapersmosquitoes, flamethrowers, could be done puentingshaving in the hair the symbol of the skull and the rose, they presumed to have “the greatest Megatron From the world “… and end up eating Paella at six in the morning.” It was like going to one of the great festivals of now, such as Tomorrowland or Ultra Music Festival, “says Israel worm, 35, of his first time with 16.” It was the place to see the DJ of the moment: DJ Marta, DJ Napo, Christian Millán, Juandy …
Worm and his friends, all minors at that time, raised in Alcalá de Henares, the first radical headquarters, coincidence that became among some a pride, organized to buy tickets in the center of Madrid. “I still have it. I have even the bracelet and ticket of the bus that came out, if I remember correctly, at 17.00,” he says. The night before, he says, it was hard for him to sleep. Saturday was his big day, he had to comb, shave, put on the orange shirt. “I will never forget that Israel was with a rosary and I think that a father should not be known,” says his friend Alejandro Martínez, 34, that that day of 2007 was on the same bus to the orange party.
The pulsations of these kids began to climb even before getting out of the bus. “I was the first to see Radical from the window and I shouted: ‘Host, it’s here, we’re already’. People began to applaud, come up, to make chants, shout. It was like being with the fans, with yours. I got off and the emotion was incredible when you saw the orange temple,” recalls worm. At that time, what calls the orange temple was a city dyed of that color. The figures are complicated to contrast over the years, the change of currency and the impossibility of contacting the first promoters, but a session that was able to simulate almost the deployment of a festival in a single night gave great benefits that multiplied with the sale of records of each party.
Now, explains Mario del Pino, of 2m Group, current promoters with DJ Marta of radical events, remains a good business, but competition from the end of confinement with the explosion of festivals and other musical quotes is voracious. This is one of the reasons why on June 8, at six in the morning, the orange party closed forever. “We have to fight against all,” says the DJ in reference to the classic summer festivals, but also those of reggaeton, electronics and those that exploit the raw material with which he works: the remember of the bakalao.
Several generations
“You also have to take into account the age of the attendees,” continues from the pine. In these sessions, 20 -year -old and adults of more than 40, the first radicalists come together. “Between 18.00 and 00.00 we click the oldest, the remember of radical that covers from the nineties until 2010. A music that the older people like that only leaves in the afternoon, “explains Dj Marta.” And then we put cane with more danceable, faster and more fun music that attracts young people. “David de Radical summarizes it:” Young people claim a lot of shoe. “
In the year 99, when David, now 52 years old – “If I don’t take off my cap, it seems that I am 35,” he laughs – got into the Cabin of Dj Marta and others of his friends, took the micro and began to encourage people. “We are the classic bakalas,” says the speaker“We have been living from this music for 25 years, reinventing it in very difficult times as in 2010, when the reggaeton entered strongly. Luckily, Latin music is going down a little and what we do like it again.” Her friend points out: “One thing is that there is resurfaced, but it is not fashionable, what happens is that music has not come so much to young people: it is singing, commercial, very partying, danceable … the reggaeton serves more to link and, for example, although the house He tried, he did not replace this music. ”
In the orange party they adapt to the times, but they always start from the same themes. They are not refractory to trends, but those who come to this session know what will sound: You and Mede Orion too feat Caitlin; Flying Freeof Marian Dacal; Take Meof the moon; Fly On The Wings Of LoveThe Annia; Memoriesfrom Netzwerk. The peak time will come when the first chords of Promise, From Milk Inc and thousands of people get on their knees and then jump to the shout of “Radical” of David.
Parkineo
Emilio Sánchez, 35, of the group of Friends of worm and Martínez, remembers that the ritual began in the paraching with the bottle. The previous one of the orange party, like that of most of these sessions in the great discos in southern Madrid, started around the open trunk of cars. “There we drank, we did barbecue, we danced to the rhythm of the music that sounded inside,” recalls Mario del Pino, who in addition to current promoter was a faithful client of radical. “I have come to enter the disco only one hour.”
In the 2000, the Parasso sounded like inside the room through a radio paid by the organization. Now, not only does that station exist anymore, but the police controls have multiplied, there is a subway stop at the Leganés cover door, several transport services, including the VTC, “and much more conscience,” says Del Pino. There is a part of the culture of parkineo that has been lost over the years.
“I feel sorry, but I would be more worried if it ended radical, for now it is only the orange party,” says Luis. “I still don’t think it’s the last one, I hope they give us a surprise,” Pablo and Muro trust. “We have tonight to enjoy music and what we always say radicaleros: thousands of hearts and a single beat. ”