Congreso
Congreso is a musical band from Chile. Founded in 1969 in Quilpué, the band has been highly acclaimed with over 50 years in Latin American music.
The band is one of the most important bands in the history of Chilean music, both for its refined musical compositions with lyrics of social and ethnic content, as well as for the good reception of the national and international public and critics. Formed together with Los Jaivas and Los Blops, it's one of the cornerstones in the new Chilean progressive sound and the 'Chilenization of Rock' between the mid 60's and early 70's.
They began their career in the late 1960s linked to the New Chilean Song movement, however with the advent of the military dictatorship and cultural constraints of the time, added to the great instrumental vocation of its members, they evolved into a progressive rock style, and later to a fusion sound that incorporated elements also from jazz fusion, contemporary music, pop music, and world music, in a style named by them as The New Latinamerican Music.
The main composer, leader of the band, and drummer is Sergio "Tilo" González, and the lyricist and singer is Francisco "Pancho" Sazo. Both are founding members alongside Tilo's brothers and ex-members Fernando and Patricio, and Fernando Hurtado.
The band currently includes Tilo Gonzalez, Pancho Sazo, and Raul Aliaga, Sebastián Almarza, Federico Faure, Jaime Atenas, and Hugo Pirovic. Tilo's son, Simón González, is a recurring guest member as guitarist.
They have made extensive touring for North America, Europe and Latin America.
History
Beginnings as a folk rock band (1969–1978)
Congreso roots are in 1964, the year they started working in Quilpué on the core of the three Gonzalez brothers: Patricio, Sergio and Fernando, alongside bassist Fernando Hurtado. In school, they formed rock bands like The Stereos, The Shadows and finally, Los Masters. During this period they devoted themselves to instrumental covers of rock songs in English.Parallel to Los Jaivas, towards 1969 they began to experiment with indigenous instruments. With the addition of bassist and singer Francisco Sazo, from the beat band Los Sicodélicos, the band had finished its lineup and from then, they decided to call themselves Congreso. Then, the origins of Congreso are a mixture of these two groups, influenced like many of their generation by the pop rock of The Beatles. However, the new Latinamericanist ideas geared the quintet toward a new style of rock bands as outlined by Los Jaivas in Viña del Mar and Los Blops in Santiago. This rock with folk influences describes the band's earliest songs of 1969, mainly made with recorders, andean aerophones and charangos, as well as pop rhythms like in the song "Vamos andando mi amigo", an example of the hippie movement in the region.
In 1971 they released El Congreso, their first album, which included a song based on the poem by Pablo Neruda "Maestranzas de noche" and other classics, using a formula that led them to a show at the Festival of the Nueva Canción Chilena that year. Later, the Gonzalez brothers decided to begin their studies at the Institute of Music of the Universidad Católica, which slowed down their group work, though without interrupting their live performances.
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état cut soon the process of recording their second album, Terra Incognita, only released two years later and with a limited spread, given the closure of cultural spaces. The band did not give up, and became one of the few groups who continued to work in Chile during the early years of the dictatorship. Fusion music and almost cryptic lyrics were their codes to survive the rigorous state surveillance, like in the song "Arcoiris de hollín": "Cuatro jinetes negros / pasan volando / Van levantando noche / niebla y espanto", included in the album Congreso in 1977, also sometimes referred to as "brown album" and in clear reference to the Military junta. Two years later they recorded La Misa de los Andes, which was not widely distributed and preceded the first group break up when three members, Fernando Hurtado, Renato Vivaldi and vocalist and lyricist Francisco Sazo, is leaving the group. The latter traveling to Belgium for a PhD in philosophy.
Member changes and shift to progressive rock (1979–1984)
The exit of part of the band reduced the power of the group in the middle of the dictatorship, but the protest songs were cleverly camouflaged with poetic lyrics and musical complexities. The three Gonzalez brothers took over a year to reassemble the group while they kept working as support musicians in television orchestras and pop musicians like the Argentine pianist Raúl di Blasio. That's how they met the young Chilean-Brazilian Joe Vasconcellos, whose latinamericanist interests and his musical training, they thought, would give a new look to the project. Beside him, the recently integrated pianist Anibal Correa and bassist Ernesto Holman, completed the reshaping of Congreso.Vasconcellos then assumed as a lyricist, and with that scheme published Viaje por la cresta del mundo in 1981, one of the band's strongest works, with some of the most complex compositions by Tilo such as "Viaje por la cresta del mundo", "Hijo del diluvio" or "El descarril". However, public recognition would come with the inclusion of a simple song, the classic "Hijo del sol luminoso" written by Joe Vasconcellos. Congreso then gave a clear shift towards progressive rock, though always keeping a Latin American style.
Moving between the stages of the Nueva Canción Chilena, rock spaces that opened in those years, and college circuits, Congreso consolidated in this new context as a fundamental band of the Chilean scene. Their album Ha llegado carta roamed many scenarios, and the band was hired by CBS-Argentina to record a new production. Vasconcellos left the band, and the group focused its repertoire on instrumentals, which gave life to Pájaros de arcilla in 1984. In this year saxophonist Jaime Atenas joined the band from the group Ensemble Jazz-Fusion. Even though pájaros was critically acclaimed, it was never edited in Chile, which made them distance themselves from their local audience, generating a crisis that was settled shortly when Sazo returned after years of study in Europe.
Return of Sazo and democracy (1985–1990)
A new album would refresh the style of the group: Estoy que me muero, returning to a more popular style, now with lyrics written by Sazo. Moreover, drummer Sergio "Tilo" Gonzalez, band leader, had recruited two young musicians from the band Fulano: keyboardist Jaime Vivanco and electric bassist Jorge Campos, giving a boost to the group. Congreso was aimed at merging with fine touches of jazz while still maintaining their style, with songs like "Súbete a la vereda", "La isla del tesoro" y "Calipso intenso, casi azul" among others. With a renewed lineup, Congreso toured Chile in 1987. As a result of that tour came the double cassette Gira al sur, which was distinguished by its emphasis on dance rhythms, bright songs and colorful staging, with which the band garnered all the fame scattered in twenty years of history.The song "Calypso intenso, casi azul" was the emblem of the new stage, and the development and popularity coincided with the 1988 referendum that marked the exit of Augusto Pinochet from La Moneda, and the Chilean transition to democracy. In this context, Congreso edited Para los arqueólogos del futuro, an album with some of the fastest-paced rhythms in the band's history, and in which they sang about racial freedom, they played, ironized and deployed all of their instrumental resources. According to Sazo, the album "touches on the ability to forget in Latin America, which ends with the dead, especially with those of this era." Songs like "En todas las esquinas" or "El trapecista" reached high radial diffusion, especially the former which became one of the iconic themes of the arrival of democracy. The album was the first in the group's history to reach the category of "gold". Congreso retained the formula on the next disc, Aire Puro, but the mass echo was, this time, more moderate. The success of this period include themes that echoed those living with passion the Chilean transition to democracy, like in the song "Aire puro", which allowed them to participate in the legendary concert Desde Chile... un abrazo a la esperanza of Amnesty International in 1990 alongside renowned international artists such as Sinéad O'Connor, Sting, Peter Gabriel, New Kids on the Block, Jackson Browne, Luz Casal, Wynton Marsalis, Rubén Blades, and Inti-Illimani, among others.