Music, money and the messiah: Rocking Out for Christ

La Casa de la Casa, titan of the Bolivian rock industry, is not a corporate production house. The difference lies in the details: swap the glimmering skyscraper for a pasty one-storey ‘T’, the jet-setting executive for a jet-setting missionary, the love ballads to an ambiguous ‘she’ for love ballads to an ambiguous, asexual ‘He’. (Keep the cross necklace, keep the shot glass, keep the Saturday open-air festivals.) With over 90 percent of Bolivians identifying as Christian, the biggest break for a band is likely to be a gig at the local church.

‘God is cool’, says J.P. Burillo, lead singer and guitarist of Zona Sur’s main Evangelical church, Kairos. With almost half of its membership under 18, Kairos worship services encourage jumping, hand waving, lip-synching and occasionally choreographed steps, and when the pastor takes over, the electric strings take second-in-command.

The right music has the power to extract tears out of a powerful sermon, says Alexander Iturralde, Bolivia’s best bassist and member of its most popular Christian band, Tejilah. Like two of the band’s other three players, he was in a secular band before making the switch, but he says he was never comfortable with the previous crowd of rockers. ‘That phase is already over’, says Iturralde. ‘It’s gone. Now, I’m happy, and I thank God for it. Now, when I play, it’s spiritually rich.’

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