Chilean rock is rock music and its corresponding subgenres produced in Chile or by Chileans. Chilean rock lyrics are usually sung in Spanish so can be considered as part of rock en español, although they are sometimes sung in English as well.
Rock music was first produced in Chile in the late 1950s by bands that imitated, and sometimes translated, international rock and roll hits from the U.S. This movement was known as the Nueva Ola (New Wave).Nueva Ola www.musicapopular.cl. Retrieved 24 February 2013.Rock chileno www.memoriachilena.cl. Retrieved 24 February 2013. Although original bands started to emerge as well in the early 1960s.
During the second half of the 1960s, after the success of rock and roll music, the Nueva Canción Chilena (New Chilean Song) and (Latin American fusion) genres were born in Chile, bringing to fame artists like Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara as extremely influential folk singers, or Los Jaivas and Congreso who were more instrumentally elaborated.Fusión latinoamericana www.musicapopular.cl. Retrieved 24 February 2013.
In the 1970s, however, there was a decline in the country's rock scene as a result of the military dictatorship imposed by the 1973 coup d'état. From 1973 to 1990, all forms of rock music were prohibited (along with an important part of the cultural life), causing stagnation in the music industry.Morris, Nancy. 1986. Canto Porque es Necesario Cantar: The New Song Movement in Chile, 1973–1983. Latin American Research Review, Vol. 21, pp. 117–136. Nevertheless, an underground scene grew up with new genres such as heavy metal, punk and new wave music. Los Prisioneros were the most outstanding band of this era.
The 1990s saw the beginning of a revival for Chilean rock music, with several Chilean bands finding international success along with the growth of many rock subgenres such as alternative rock, pop rock, funk rock, reggae, grunge, britpop or latin rock becoming commercially successful. Los Tres became the most iconic rock band of this era, alongside La Ley in pop.
In the early 21st century, many more independent artists have become increasingly popular, while the previous ones have consolidated generating a cultural legacy of wide variety and trajectory. Synth pop, neo-folk rock, latin rock, alternative rock and pop rock are recently successful subgenres, but are harder to categorize due to their fusion and indie natures.
Although frequently omitted from mass media preferring commercial foreign music instead, Chile has an extensive and rich rock culture, a permanent underground scene with hundreds of recognized bands, many niches of varied alternative sub-genres, as well as powerful regional scenes in Concepción and Valparaíso.
Early rock and roll and Nueva Ola (1955–1965)
Rock and roll originated in the United States in the late 1940s and 1950s and expanded rapidly around the world. In the late 1950s, the first Chilean rock and roll bands emerged, largely imitating popular North American bands and performing rock and roll songs they were already hits in the U.S. Some of the first Chilean rock and roll bands included William Reb y sus Rock Kings, Harry Shaw y Los Truenos, which performed versions of Elvis Presley tracks in 1956–57 and would later go on to record versions of Beatles songs. However, William Reb felt he never received the credit he deserved for his part in Chilean rock and roll.Williams Rebolledo: la historia del olvidado primer rockero chileno Mauricio Jürgensen, www.latercera.cl. Retrieved 28 February 2013.
Chile's first solo rock and roll artists were Peter Rock, with his Elvis Presley cover Baby, I Don't Care/Something Happened (1959), and Nadia Milton, with her single Scobidou/Un poco (1960).
The twist was also very popular in the 1950s, imported to Chile by the band Los Twisters with the singles Penas juveniles, Caprichitos, Me recordarás, Sueña and Mi secreto. In 1963, Los Twisters were voted the most popular band in Chile.Biografía de Luis Dimas Musicapopular.cl. Retrieved 24 February 2013.
What began in the 1950s with imitations of American rock and roll soon developed into original music. La Orquesta Huambaly, with its roots in tropical music and jazz, were the first Chilean rock and roll band to compose original songs, including Huambaly rock (1957) and Rock del mono (Monkey Rock, 1958).
However, the first real commercial success story of the Nueva Ola scene was Los Ramblers, with their El Rock del Mundial (World Cup Rock) album released in May 1962 for the 1962 FIFA World Cup in Chile. www.scd.cl"La verdadera historia del rock del mundial a 50 años de su creación" 28 May 2012
Los Ramblers opened the door to many other successful Nueva Ola artists. Some of the most well-known were: Peter Rock, Alan y sus Bates, Los Rockets, Buddy Richard, José Alfredo Fuentes, Antonio Prieto, Antonio Zabaleta, Cecilia Pantoja, Germán Casas, Ginette Acevedo, Gloria Benavides, Jorge Pedreros, Luis Dimas, Maitén Montenegro, Marcelo Hernández, Mirella Gilbert, Osvaldo Díaz, Germaín de la Fuente, Paolo Salvatore, Pat Henry, and Roberto Vicking Valdés. The Nueva Ola movement spread out of Santiago and throughout Chile, with bands like The New Demons forming in the northern city of Iquique, and The Blue Splendor, who formed – and still perform today – in Valparaíso.
The success of the Chilean Nueva Ola lasted until the mid-1960s, led by a second generation of musicians characterized by their original compositions, such as Buddy Richard, Patricio Renán, Los Ángeles Negros, José Alfredo Fuentes and Cecilia, considered by some critics as the greatest teen star of the mid-1960s.Cecilia Cristóbal Peña, musicapopular.cl. Retrieved 24 February 2013.
The Nueva Ola has been criticized for foreignizing Chilean music because the style, lyrics and even names were heavily lifted from American and British culture.La nueva ola www.memoriachilena.cl. Retrieved 23 February 2013. For some, the Nueva Ola movement is not considered the true origin of Chilean rock. They point instead to groups like Los Mac's, Los Jockers and Los Vidrios Quebrados, who modelled themselves more on bands like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, and "were the first groupings who can really be identified as ‘rock made in Chile’, going further than the pop figures of the Nueva Ola."Los Jockers musicapopular.cl. Retrieved 23 February 2013. Bands that followed them were Los Picapiedras, Los Beat 4, Los Lark's and Los Sonny's one of the bands of future Florcita Motuda.
Folk, Fusión Latinoamericana and psychedelic rock (1965–1973)
New chilean song During the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s, after the strong American and British influences of the Nueva Ola, the Chilean rock movement began to return to the country's indigenous and Latin American sounds looking for his own identity. A neo-folk movement developed with the aim of recovering traditional Chilean folk music and merging it with Latin American rhythms such as andean music. This would have its fullest expression in the Nueva Canción Chilena (the New Chilean Song), which grew up in parallel to other nueva canción movements across Latin America.La nueva canción chilena www.memoriachilena.cl. Retrieved 24 February 2013Nueva canción chilena www.musicapopular.cl. Retrieved 24 February 2013.
The Nueva Canción Chilena was characterized by a rediscovery of the instruments and sounds of historic Latin American traditions, and in particular the work of the artists Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara. Despite being mainly acoustic, both Parra and Jara were extremely influential in the development of a new, socially aware folk culture, and rock culture as well, which looked beyond traditional peasants themes and drew in contemporary issues from across Chile and Latin America. They tried to represent the reality of life for working-class people, instead of the idealized portrait traditionally seen in older folk music.
Fusión Latinoamericana After the singer-songwriter approach of the Nueva Canción, Los Jaivas would lead the movement to a more progressive rock style. Forming in 1963 in Viña del Mar, Los Jaivas mixed rock with South American ancestral music to form what became known as folk progressive rock or Fusión Latinoamericana. The 1981 album Alturas de Macchu Picchu (based on lyrics from The Heights of Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda) is considered a South American rock masterpiece. Congreso and Los Blops would follow this more elaborated way to make music and all three would be considered cornerstones in the definitive "Chilenization of Rock". Congreso would last more than 50 years creating new music and becoming an iconic Chilean band. En Busca del Tiempo Perdido, Congregación, Combo Xingú, Sol y Medianoche, Kissing Spell/Embrujo, Frutos del País and Panal made the rest of the scene. Their style would be later known as Fusión latinoamericana.
Psychedelic rock and Piedra Roja festival
Psychedelic rock and blues rock came to Chile in the 1970s as it did elsewhere, influencing bands like Aguaturbia, Escombros and Sacros. Escombros contained former members of Los Mac's and Los Jockers and sung in English, producing covers of Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin among others.Escombros Ana María Urtado, www.musicapopular.cl. Retrieved 24 February 2013. Sacros have been compared to The Byrds and Bob Dylan, with traces of, and released their first album, Sacros, days before the 1973 military coup. The album is now a collector's item.Sacros Musicapopular.cl. Retrieved 24 February 2013.
The famous Woodstock Festival in the U.S. inspired a similar event in Santiago, the Piedra Roja Festival of October 1970. The festival attracted many followers of the hippie movement and included performances by Los Blops and Los Jaivas, but poor organization led to a chaotic event which included sound problems and the presence of drugs and crime. The festival was, according to the National Digital Library of Chile, "the moment in which the youth subculture, represented by rock, became a public issue and was reported in the media as a latent social problem. Young people were shown as liberal, drug-taking, long-haired rebels who were affecting mainstream society."Piedra Roja www.memoriachilena.cl. Retrieved 28 February 2013.
Major music festivals of the time were Primer Encuentro de Música de Vanguardia (January 1970), Primer Festival de Rock Progresivo (October 1971) and Los Caminos Que Se Abren (February 1973). All three happened at Quinta Vergara (Viña del Mar).
Underground scene during the dictatorship (1973–1989)
The proliferation of Chilean rock bands in the early 1970s ended with the military coup of 11 September 1973. The repressive military regime prohibited all manifestations of rock music, along with many other forms of culture (see Military government of Chile (1973–1990): cultural life). This brought about a decline of the music industry in Chile and a deterioration of the Chilean rock scene. Some Latin American fusion bands broke up, like Los Blop's, while others fled abroad, like Los Jaivas, who emigrated to Argentina. Others, like Congreso, were forced to radically change their music to a progressive rock style. By the late 1970s, an underground scene gradually began to emerge with punk rock, heavy metal, and later new wave music becoming increasingly popular.
Los Prisioneros