Gustavo Cerati’s mother still has hope

It is hard indeed to have much hope for the recovery of Gustavo Cerati. The former frontman of Soda Stereo, the pioneering Argentine rock band, has been in a coma since suffering a stroke while on tour in 2010.

El Universal, the Mexico City newspaper, reports today that Lilian Clark, the singer’s mother, believes there still may be “small signs of hope” to be found in her son’s condition.

“We who are helping at his side every day, we note some responses, small perhaps, but responses,” the newspaper quotes Clark as telling Colombia’s RCN Radio in Spanish. “This cheers us up as we keep going forward.”

Cerati has been in a coma for almost three years. He collapsed while performing at a concert in Caracas in May 2010, and since then has been in intensive care in Buenos Aires. He and Soda Stereo personified a generation of Argentines who came of age in the mid- to late-1980s, as the South American country was shaking off years of dictatorship and embracing new forms of personal freedom and cultural expression.

His family has been appreciative of the global outpourings of concern, but also wary of doing anything that would seem to be exploiting the tragedy. Last fall, for example, the family announced that although it was grateful for a number of planned homages to Cerati, it wouldn’t officially be taking part in any of them.

Yet Cerati’s family has another new cause for taking some solace: Clark’s 18-year-old grandson, Benito Cerati, recently launched his own music career.

“He is very special,” Clark was quoted as saying. “He reminds me a great deal of Gustavo as a child.”

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