Dick El Demasiado is, by his own admission, an impostor. Born Dick Verdult in the Netherlands in 1954, the musician and media artist has become a pivotal figure on Argentina's experimental music scene thanks to an elaborate hoax.
In 1996, he unveiled the Web site for Festicumex (Festival de Cumbias Experimentales), described as "an event that unites friendship, music and new experiments, and that dares to ignore the music industry's laws."
The inaugural bash was held in Honduras, and featured genre-bending artists such as Hygienica Gonzalez, Loteria Erotica and Dick El Demasiado. Except that it didn't. The event was pure fiction. As its creator described it, "The first subsidized, antedated festival," but it took on a life of its own.