19 Live Performances Over 2 Days & Nights

• EL TRI • CAIFANES • CAFE TACVBA

• MALDITA VECINDAD • MOLOTOV • KINKY

• PANTEON ROCOCO • OZOMATLI

• LOS AMIGOS INVISIBLES • DIVISION MINUSCULA

• NORTEC COLLECTIVE: BOSTICH + FUSSIBLE

• SILVERIO • FINDE • SIDDHARTHA • S7N

• PALENKE SOULTRIBE • MEXICAN DUBWISER • METALACHI

THE MEDIA CELEBRATED THE EVENT AS A CULTURAL MILESTONE

Billboard
"Rock Fiesta: Transforming a Desert Destination for the Elderly Into a Hotbed of Latin Rock" 
http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/6858258/rock-fiesta-hal-davidson-quartzite-arizona-latin-festival-rock

Rock Fiesta presented the crème de la crème of internationally renowned recording artists descended on Desert Gardens Showgrounds in Quartzsite, Arizona for an unforgettable weekend.

Less than a two hour drive west of Phoenix with a site capacity of 75,000, set at the foot of mystical "Q Mountain," the 118 acre Desert Gardens Showgrounds was transformed into a world class festival site with large scale excavation and construction building a perfect 15 acre concert area. 47.4 tons of production materials were moved to build one huge double Main Stage with 770,000 watts of crown power inside of a state-of-the-art sound and lights array plus 2 LED-sound relay towers. In addition to hosting a weekend of great music, Rock Fiesta welcomed concert goers with on-site camping, a VIP lounge, beer garden, late night dance tents, cantina with 70’ bar, water slide, food vendors, shade tents and top notch first aid stations.

Event organizer Hal Davidson looks back with pride on Rock Fiesta ..."My desire was to do something great to bring the Latino rockers together in one place at one time to celebrate life. There was magic on that land that weekend and I’m glad to in some small way rekindle that magic by making these concert shirts and hoodies available again, and this time to an even wider audience."

Rock Fiesta’s Facebook page has earned over 18,000 Likes (in 44 countries) and the number continues to grow with many requests for a Rock Fiesta return.

Rock Fiesta Brings Latin-Rock Authenticity to the Arizona Desert
by MTV News Staff

The first-ever festival featured great performance after performance. And while the press took to calling Rock Fiesta the Latino answer to Coachella, in reality its totemic lineup and reigning spirit of chaos suggest a more apt Woodstock comparison.

Rock Fiesta organizer Hal Davidson entered the world of rock en español three years ago, when Monterrey, Mexico, rockers Kinky, with whom he’s worked as a promoter, showed him a pic of them performing in front of 80,000 people at Mexico City’s Vive Latino festival.

"I saw that there was a major hole in the market and a really great opportunity," Davidson tells MTV. "There’s never been a camp-out Latino rock festival in America before, or anywhere else in the world. We’re the first ones." The Latino music festival market is drastically underserved.

"2016’s Rock Fiesta was a diamond in the rough."

Rock Fiesta Spring Break 2016: Arizona to Host the Biggest Latin Rock Festival in the U.S.
By Editor AZLatinos.com

As the festival draws closer, the 115-acre Desert Gardens Show Grounds is transforming into a World Class festival site with large scale excavation and construction taking place in an effort to build a perfect 15-acre concert area containing; 47.4 tons of production, one huge double Main Stage, 770,000 watts of crown power inside of a state-of-the-art sound and lights array plus 2 LED-sound relay towers

"Thirteen and a half hours of rock in your face with no breaks for two days in a row,"
By Stephanie Sanchez KAWC

Davidson said. But would 3,500 local residents and seasonal RV living retirees be up for a three day Latin rock show? "We may have 50,000 Mexicans jumping up and down, screaming, drinking beer," Davidson said. "Do you realize that? Is that OK? Can we bring that? They said yes, bring it … we did and it was loved by all."

This was the first time ever Arizona had this type of festival.

Channel 12 NBC Arizona

Rock Fiesta was basically a Latin Rock Coachella and the energy was amazing. I call it the mini-Coachella with much potential for it to occur next year.

People -- and not only Latinos -- attended the festival from different parts of the world such as Chicago, Mexico, Guatemala, New York and Los Angeles, to name a few.

I interviewed a young man named Cesar, 22, from Sonora, Mexico. He told me how he packed up his bags, got on a bus with his passport and set up camp for the weekend at the Rock Fiesta campsite. The festival had two stages with live bands playing music back to back. 12 News had the chance to interview several iconic bands: Los Angeles' own Ozomatli, Alex Lora from El Tri and S7N.

Not only did we get to interview, but also capture the essence of the ambiance: people cheering all day, vendors in every corner of the show grounds and even a Donald Trump piñata being passed around the crowd.

There were thousands of people on Friday leading up to Saturday. Let me just emphasize that by the end of the night, I could barely move through the crowds while trying to use Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram so our 12 News audience could be part of the fun as well.

We even did a 12 News Facebook live stream in bilingual for the first time and toured the show grounds along with a simple interview of why it meant so much for Latinos and more to unite at concerts like these.

 Hal Davidson's Rock Fiesta: Transforming a Desert Destination into a Hotbed of Latin Rock

1/27/2016 billboard by Judy Cantor-Navas

Hal Davidson, a promoter with a varied past, is taking a big bet that the inaugural Rock Fiesta festival will attract a younger, Spanish-speaking crowd to an Arizona desert town normally frequented by the happily blue-haired.

Davidson is bringing nearly twenty of Mexico’s most beloved rock bands to Quartzsite, a town he calls "a playground for octogenarians," for a two-day festival that will, he sincerely hopes, plug a hole in the festival market and draw significant crowds of fans from both sides of the border.

"The festival will run from 11a.m. to 12:30 in the morning, with no stops," says Davidson, who tells Billboard the independently-funded Fiesta will cost $2 million to produce. "It will be rock, in your face, for 13-and-a-half hours on two separate days. This will never happen again."

Rock Fiesta's lineup features legendary rock en español bands and Latin alternative artists including Cafe Tacvba, Caifanes, Maldita Vecindad, El Tri, Molotov and Monterrey-based Kinky. Its home will be Desert Gardens, a 118-acre camping site in Quartzsite around 100 miles from the Mexican border and a three- to four-hour drive from Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Tijuana and Mexicali, and two hours from Phoenix.

Davidson, 61, started planning the festival three years ago, after being introduced to rock en español by Kinky, becoming friendly with the group after promoting one of their shows in Miami. But over lunch, one of the band members took out his phone and showed him a photo of the group performing at Mexico City’s massive Vive Latino festival. "I said 'that looks like 80,000 people and you on stage," Davidson recounts. "And they said, ‘that’s 80,000 people and us on stage."

That was enough for Davidson to envision the potential for a major Latin rock festival in the United States. Upon Kinky’s suggestion, Davidson looked for a location along the U.S.-Mexico border, spending $30,000 in travel costs over two years to scout potential sites, passing over McAllen and Austin, TX, Albuquerque and Santa Fe NM and Las Vegas, NV as potential sites. None worked out.

It was around then that Davidson received a call over opportunities to bring a festival to Quartzsite -- a country music festival was suggested. Instead, he proposed Rock Fiesta.

"If you’re a passionate promoter who sees a hole in the market, it doesn't matter whether you’re Latino or not," says Davidson, who started his lengthy career as the twenty-year-old organizer of the legendary Stompin 76 bluegrass festival near Galax, VA, which he remembers as a wild time with over 100,000 attending! After that festival, Davidson worked as a Ringling Bros. circus promoter, Las Vegas casino Promotions Manager, resort marketing star in Florida and later began logging miles as an international music festival consultant.

"As a professional producer, you can work with any kind of music as long as you’ve got the money and the town or municipality is willing," says Davidson, who has now set up a base in Quartzsite and contracted a Rock Fiesta production team, among whom he is the only one "who is not Latino or speaks Spanish."

Davidson sees Rock Fiesta as a win-win situation for Spanish-language rock fans and Quartzsite. He says the town, which has a resident population of about 3,600 and attracts thousands of the aforementioned elderly visitors in the wintertime, will benefit from reaching new demographics that Rock Fiesta will bring. Among other financial arrangements with city leaders and influencers, a portion of the proceeds from bar sales at the festival will be donated to the local Rotary Club. The producer says he is not worried about the culture clash that will occur on the festival weekend, adding that there will be "big time security" at the event.

Festivals focusing on Latin rock and alternative music have been increasing in number over the past few years; Chicago’s Ruido Fest and L.A.’s Supersonico have catered to a similar crowd. Another recent festival, the two-day L Festival in Costa Mesa, Ca., was billed by its producers, Universal Music and Goldenvoice, as a "Latin Coachella," it featured a line-up of both pop stars and regional Mexican artists.

Davidson asserts that his desert festival will be a more "authentic" option than L Festival, and that the scope of the Rock Fiesta camping and music experience will go beyond any other gathering. "We need a cultural event like this for the people who are supporting Latino Rock," he says. Davidson says he is working with local Arizona Latin rock producers, but is promoting the show independently.

Latin Rock and Mexican Pride Combine at Rock Fiesta

By Sarah Bennett Phoenix New Times

More than Coachella, Rock Fiesta felt at times like Warped Tour with a pressing purpose. In reality, Rock Fiesta — which we called "the Coachella of Latin Rock" for its two-day campout premise and impressive lineup of seminal Mexican acts — was never meant to be anything political. But how could the largest rock en español concert on American soil not take on greater significance when it’s happening in a state that has historically passed and enforced some of the strictest anti-immigration laws that have only served to make life miserable (if not hostile) for its Latino population?

And who on Rock Fiesta’s organizing team could have predicted that after two years of planning, their festival would fall right in the middle of a racially charged election season. Beyond politics, however, the festival marked another major milestone for rock en español as a genre: Its U.S. audience is now formidable enough to sustain large-scale music festivals.

… others with traditional pre-Columbian headgear and Mexican flags. Despite 100-plus-degree temperatures, everyone came ready to dance, mosh, and celebrate Mexico’s contributions to Latin rock on a level never before seen stateside.

Having Rock Fiesta as a one-day thing closer to LA might have allowed the event to sell out, but organizers took a big chance on presenting the bands over a multi-day format in Quartzsite, a town of a few hundred geriatric gem lovers no less than a two-hour drive from any major city. Given the impressive lineup and historic nature of the event, Rock Fiesta was under-attended, but this should not be taken as a failure. This disappointing attendance was only due to the State’s aggressive immigration policies widely telecast in national news in 2015-2016 after the event’s promotion began. The first Coachella missed its attendance goal by a similar margin and lost so much money it almost never happened again. What it lost in revenue, it made up for in precedent. Like Coachella, Rock Fiesta is only the start of something much greater.

By showcasing the splintering diversity of rock en español as a genre, Rock Fiesta laid the foundation for its inevitable entry into the mainstream American consciousness. It also demonstrated the continued need for festivals that fight the predominantly white status quo.

If the Afropunk Festival can go from a small concert of black punk bands in a Brooklyn Park to a multi-city celebration of African American music as a whole, then Rock Fiesta can easily become the Latin American response to the dominance of English-language rock.

• LIGHTWEIGHT HOODIE
• Super soft 50% Polyester/25% Cotton/25%
  Rayon with hood
• no pocket
• LOGO on front only
• Available in light gray, dark gray, or black
• Made in Mexico

$35 FAST/ FREE SHIPPING TO U.S. ONLY

Festival Producer: Hal Davidson

Ph: (240) 848-0889 
email: hal@rockfiesta.com