#053: El Expreso Imaginario [SPECIAL EDITION]
I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best stuff I hear, read, and watch every week; publish news about the industry; and interview writers, scholars, and editors about their work. My goal is to share knowledge, celebrate great work, and expand the idea of what music journalism is—and where it happens. Questions, comments, concerns? You can reach me anytime at music.journalism.insider@gmail.com.
In this special edition, I’m handing things over to freelance writer Maria Barrios. A few months ago, I asked for pitches for retrospective features on important music magazines from around the world. Maria pitched me on something I had never heard of before, El Expreso Imaginario. The Argentine magazine was published during a civic-military dictatorship, yet it featured some of the most progressive, forward-thinking ideas of the time. Here is Maria’s story of the magazine.
Otro Mundo Es Posible: Inside Argentina’s El Expreso Imaginario
Imagine opening a magazine that contained the following: Writing on the music of Bob Dylan, Sun Ra, and Tangerine Dream; an essay entitled “A Practical Guide to Inhabit Planet Earth”; a poet reimagining a Tehuelche legend; a full-color print of “Little Nemo In Slumberland”; fragments of Walt Whitman’s “Song to Myself”; and an interview with a tennis player and a musician. Where would you think it came from? What year would you think it was printed?
These were the contents of the first issue of El Expreso Imaginario, a monthly Argentinian magazine ostensibly devoted to music, but clearly concerned with so much more. Published in August of 1976, the magazine emerged as the country was descending into chaos. Spanning from 1976 to 1983, the “Proceso de Reorganización Nacional” (National Reorganization Process) would become the most violent military intervention in a long line going back to 1930. In a generalized atmosphere of censorship and terror, El Expreso was a transformative resource in a time when political activism and radical art were met with violence and death.
Cover of Issue 1, August 1976
It wasn’t easy. According to songwriter, poet, agriculturist, and El Expreso editorial director Pipo Lernoud, “it was dangerous to step over the line, but we think we were lucky because the military obviously did not understand us.” In Lernoud’s opinion, the military only dealt in political language. El Expreso was something different altogether. Case in point: During a family visit, Lernoud handed an issue of El Expreso to his conservative uncle. After he was done reading, his uncle solemnly declared: “I did not understand a single thing.”
“El Expreso had a humanistic perspective,” recalled writer Alfredo Rosso. A career journalist and radio presenter, Rosso was among the longest-running writers at El Expreso. “It managed to reach the kind of people who viewed themselves as different but weren’t entirely sure why. I was one of them.” In 1974, Rosso was a devoted reader of a prior incarnation of El Expreso Imaginario: the alternative magazine Mordisco. Anticipating a trip to London, where he thought he could document live shows and review new records, he decided to apply to join the staff of Mordisco. Recalling his initial meeting with its founder, Jorge Pistocchi, Rosso said: “Back then, whenever you went to a job interview you wore a suit and tie. So I showed up at Pistocchi’s attic, where he ran the magazine. He thought I was a cop.” Although Pistocchi showed interest in the reviews, Mordisco ended its run before the reviews went to print.
After the demise of Mordisco, Pistocchi introduced Rosso to Pipo Lernoud. Lernoud was already a prominent figure in Buenos Aires counter-culture, and had been approached by Pistocchi to start a new magazine. Together with Rosso, graphic designer and illustrator Horacio Fontova, and writers Fernando Basabru and Claudio Kleiman, Pistocchi and Lernoud had a team. “We spent all of ‘75 and the first months of ‘76 making plans,” remembered Rosso, “Jorge [Pistocchi] had great ideas, but we had no money.” It was clear they needed an investor: they found one in lawyer and impresario Alberto Ohanian. “Ohanian was very formal and owned multiple fine lingerie shops,” recalled Rosso. “But it seemed that didn’t fulfill him.” Introduced by a musician they both knew, Pistocchi and Ohanian met, and Ohanian agreed to bankroll the magazine. Pistocchi named it El Expreso Imaginario.
The publication, which ranged in tone from psychedelic to naive, was illustrated by Horacio Fontova and collaborators Reneé Olivares and Federico Azzari, who created the cover. According to Lernoud, every artist who was invited to contribute an illustration for an issue of El Expreso was told to do “whatever they felt” and most importantly, “to have fun.”
Cover of Issue 11, June 1977
From its inception, El Expreso presented Argentina and Latin America’s emerging rock culture alongside American and British stars. The staff’s involvement in the local scene and endless enthusiasm for avant-garde musical expression shone a light on a musical culture that had no visible coverage at the time. Musician Emilio Del Guercio (Almendra, Aquelarre) meditated on the magazine’s contribution to the cultural milieu: “to everything we were doing [as musicians] back then, El Expreso added another layer of ideological content that as an analysis of Argentina’s reality, expanded the limits of rock culture.”
Some of this local focus was down to Lernoud’s own career as a songwriter in the late ’60s. He was foundational to Argentina’s first rock hits, co-writing “Ayer Nomas,” the b-side of the massive hit “La Balsa” by Los Gatos. The single, which sold over 250,000 copies, shifted people’s attention towards bands who sang in Spanish.
Cloaked in unassuming language, some of the best songs by early Argentine rock bands were, in fact, a direct answer to the oppression imposed on Argentina’s youth. Bands like Manal, Arco Iris, and Almendra expanded and pioneered local psychedelia by incorporating blues, folk music, and jazz fusion to their sound. The emerging scene rallied around bohemian cafes La Cueva and La Perla, where poets, musicians, and visual artists met. “Any form of art that was part of the counterculture, like the beatnik writers, the music of Jefferson Airplane and the opposition to the Vietnam War […] influenced us a great deal,” explained Rosso. “Events like May 68 added to the ideology of the generation that would work at El Expreso.”
Inheriting the rich history of Argentina’s early rock scene, El Expreso incorporated visionary underground art and folk protest into a message that spoke to a younger generation. The magazine’s indiscriminate appetite for music happening across Latin America uncovered and promoted new sounds. Reviews jumped from progressive groups such as La Maquina de Hacer Pajaros and Invisible to the aggressive image of Argentina’s first heavy metal band, Riff. Chilean band Los Jaivas and Brazilian singers Caetano Veloso and Milton Nascimento all found coverage in El Expreso’s pages. The staff’s inclusion of artists from these countries was not accidental: both Chile and Brazil were also ruled by military dictatorships at the time.
The writers of El Expreso also looked deeply into their own country’s musical heritage. The magazine reintroduced Argentine artists like folklore troubadour Atahualpa Yupanqui and tango composer Astor Piazzolla. Aware of the lack of press coverage given to indigenous artists, the magazine featured names such as self-taught guitarist and luthier Anastasio Quiroga and Mapuche singer Aimé Painé, both of whom, to this day, remain relatively obscure.
The magazine’s extensive staff, eclectic mix of personalities, and relentless schedule created a fraught office environment. Editorial meetings would last six to seven hours and end in big communal meals. Incensed writers sought to defend their need to exceed the allotted word count. “The magazine cannot be all point size 6!” Alberto Ohanian would exclaim, worried about the reader’s ability to see the print. “Send it to point size 6!” would become a rallying cry to end what were, in Rosso’s words “demented brawls” that reflected “people’s genuine love for their job.” For Horacio Fontova, these last-minute additions would mean staying up until 3 AM working on the magazine’s design. Fontova did the layout manually using galleys, Letraset, and the occasional missed diacritical mark in ballpoint pen. The copy-editing process at El Expreso was also an absurdist practice. “I had to use a light blue marker because it didn’t affect the final prints, don’t ask me WHY,” recounts Gloria Guerrero, who worked as a copy editor. “I did it for years and years. Computers didn’t even exist back then.”
Cover of Issue 2, September 1976
Guerrero could not remember how she joined the staff. “I became friends with Alfredo Rosso and Fernando Basabru because of King Crimson, a band name I wrote in my school uniform using a whiteboard marker,” remembers Guerrero. “Back then rock didn’t exist [in Argentina] and before talking about ‘culture’ we spoke of ‘counter-culture.’ I was far from political and listened to whatever I could get. Rock & roll was an excuse to hang out with others.”
El Expreso’s office was a welcoming place for writers, regardless of age, gender, and experience. The director’s no-rules approach and the staff’s energy and spirit of inquiry made for a supportive environment. Despite being confined by a society that encouraged obedience and traditional values, the magazine’s staff thrived. Young writers and aspiring journalists like Guerrero had the chance to develop their chops. After her time at El Expreso, Guerrero became a columnist and editorial secretary for the magazine Humor Registrado, followed by a career as the editorial director of Rolling Stone Argentina. “For me,” reflected Guerrero, “El Expreso was and continues to be, in the popular imagination, the synthesis of grit, interplanetary consciousness, and heart.”
In 1980, Lernoud ran a feature on natural birth, inspired by Ina May Gaskin’s book Spiritual Midwifery and The Farm Community in Tennessee. The story included detailed illustrations and photographs of women in labor, held by their partners. Lernoud soon got a call from a traditional women’s magazine, asking how it got past the censors, controlled at the time by the Military Intelligent Services. “We didn’t bother to ask for permission,” Lernoud confessed. “The whole process was informal, delirious, and decidedly hippie.” It’s incredible to think about, especially when you consider that simply having long hair could lead to being detained. “We didn’t give [the military] an excuse to censor us,” explained Rosso. “Aside from the occasional cop dressed in civilian clothes who would come to our office, sit around and then leave, nothing major happened.”
Page 32 of Issue 49, August 1980
El Expreso’s aim was in showing its readers that another world was possible. Delving into sustainability, science, mysticism, alternative living, experimental film, poetry, and performance art, each issue was presented as a trip: a challenge to venture out of the social mold dictated by the junta. Horacio Fontova’s role as an art director, graphic designer, and illustrator was crucial. Fontova’s odd characters populated the pages: little elves and made-up animals for Lernoud’s ecology segments, clownish beings with giant ears for Kleiman’s record reviews, oracle-like creatures placed next to the editorial page, and meditative characters guarding over the letters from readers segment. Fontova’s fertile imagination was the perfect pairing for the magazine’s surreal tone.
Page 18 of Issue 9, April 1977
In 1980, however, four years after El Expreso’s first issue, conflicts arose between the staff. Pistocchi resigned. Lernoud and Fontova followed the year after. Rosso, who believed the magazine was a symbol of resistance, stayed. By 1982, the magazine focused exclusively on music. The hand-drawn covers were replaced with photographs of artists. Faithful readers resented the new direction, and the magazine’s language became more standard.
Cover of Issue 74, September 1982
Ultimately, El Expreso became a classic rock magazine. Under a new director, the staff became disengaged. “I’m under the impression that Alberto [Ohanian] walked into the office one day and, with any luck, saw only the secretary and another writer were there,” ventured Rosso. “So he decided to call it quits.” In January 1983, issue #78 was published; it would be the last. Less than a year later—on December 10, 1983—democracy returned to Argentina.
Inspired by the freedom of expression that came with the end of the regime, the former creators and original staff moved on to new projects. Jorge Pistocchi led efforts to reappropriate a textile factory, Amat de Monte Grande. Collaborating with its owner and the local community, 200 workers were successfully reincorporated. During the ’90s, Pipo Lernoud and Alfredo Rosso would reunite to work on another magazine, which they called La Mano. Rosso also hosted two of the most enduring radio shows in the country, “La Casa del Rock Naciente” and “La Trama Celeste.” Horacio Fontova had a long career as a musician, comedian, and actor. In the ’00s, the whole staff would reunite to host debates in which they shared ideas, anecdotes, and reflections on the magazine’s legacy.
In retrospect, El Expreso Imaginario contributed to Argentina’s culture in ways its creators could not have foreseen. As a hub for radical ideas and art, it became a necessary medium that transmitted people’s voices at a time of oppression. As an unconventional workplace, it gave a voice to the work of young journalists. As a testimony of a musical era, it helped Argentine and Latin American sounds reach a more thoughtful and broader audience. And for its audience, El Expreso’s legacy is profound: it functioned as an unexpected spiritual guide on Argentina’s path to stumbling out of the dark and into the future.
All images courtesy of La Expreso Imaginario, which has the entire archive of the magazine available in PDF form. Check out more of Maria’s work at her website or Twitter.
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