Last Wednesday night I went to a concert here in Chillán by the Chilean rock group Los Tres. They have been around since the 80's, but really hit their stride in the 90's after the Pinochet dictadura was peacefully overthrown. I just recently discovered their music and bought their latest CD. I was really surprised to see that they were playing in Chillán, since we are pretty far from the mainstream down here and good concerts are few and far between.On the night of the concert I arrived at the Casa del Deporte a few minutes before the scheduled 9:00 pm starting time, ticket in hand. The line at the door stretched around the corner, so I wandered along its length to the end. As soon as I took my place at the end of the line, a young substitute teacher from school, Orlando, came up and motioned to me to come with him. He and another young teacher, Nelson, were farther up in the line. Although we hadn't really had time to get to know each other in the first few weeks of school, they recognized me and took me under their wing.
Once inside, I realized that I might be the oldest person in the building. There must have been 3-4000 university students seated in the wooden bleachers of the aging gym. As soon as the band started, everyone started singing. And I mean everyone, and every song. It was remarkable. I have mentioned before my impression of Chilean parties, where one person starts to play the guitar and everyone starts to sing along. This concert was no different, except that there were several thousand people at this party. The crowd swayed, there arms aloft in gentle waves, as the band played. Occasionally they would all hold up their cell phones, the lighted dials replacing the bic lighters of concerts of yester-year.
The crowd was incredible, and the band was awesome. Los Tres can really rock. They played for about an hour and a half, then left the stage. The crowd started clapping for an encore, and then started chanting in unison, one example being "no nos vamos sin miramos" (loosely translated: we are not leaving without seeing you). This encore solicitation went on for about 15 minutes, and the chants kept changing, but the volume remained constant, and eventually the band came back and played for another 45 minutes!
It was all quite splendid. Great music, great crowd, great energy.
Here is an MP3 of my favorite Los Tres song, Hagalo Usted Mismo (do it yourself), which tells the story of a conversation between God and a guy with woman problems.
Here is a link to a good Wikipedia article on Los Tres.
