El Abrazo - a Chilean Music Festival!

A couple of weekends ago we went to our first music festival in Chile, "El Abrazo" (The Embrace), held in a park in Santiago and featuring a long list of the most popular Chilean and Argentinian artists. We were familiar with a few of the bands and artists playing, but not most of them so it was a great opportunity to see lots of Chilean and Argentinian music in one go.

The festival's full title was "El Abrazo - Cristal en vivo". Cristal is one of the largest brewers in Chile, if you read our Colo-Colo post you'll have seen that they sponsor football teams, and they sponsored this music festival. So shortly after arriving, Struan went for what looked like the beer tent:

Beer tent in the distance?

Surely a beer tent, it says Cristal on and everything...

However, on full investigation it turned out that there was not an alcoholic beverage in the whole festival - no licence at all! We later asked one of our Chilean friends that we bumped into there why this was - she said "because we are Chilean". There are two ways to take that, either she was referring to the occasional lapse in logic that occurs here, or that putting large numbers of Chileans in one place then giving them alcohol is a recipe for disaster. On the second, Chileans can drink, but like the Brits generally can't handle it. They're better natured with it on the whole, and it's relatively unusual to see problems like fights, but they do happen when there are large numbers of very drunk Chilenos.

Either way, having a music festival sponsored by a beer company, but not actually selling the beer there seemed very strange to us. 

Then the food. Having fond memories of everything from lovely paella to falafel to keralan fish curry served at Glastonbury, and the grilled meat from the fondas in this very park, we quickly checked out what was available. It turned out that the other corporate sponsor was Pepsi, who provided soft drinks, obvs, and burgers and hot dogs. No ribs off the grill here.At the time, Anna described her burger as "squatting like a toad in front of her, having the last laugh."

There is definitely a problem with American style corporatism in Chile, something we might talk about another time, or maybe not as it's not much fun. It's odd watching music which celebrates and to a large extent defines Chilean and Argentinian culture while surrounded by Pepsi logos. That's apart from the fact that in our experience allowing lots of small traders to provide different foodstalls has an infinitely tastier outcome for punters than giving over all refreshment rights to one large drinks manufacturer.

Struan thinking dark thoughts AND speaking with his mouth full

Anyway, after we'd got over these disappointments we got down to enjoying the music. The line up alternated between a Chilean band/ artist, then an Argentinian one. Some of the musical aristocracy of both countries were there, comparable (in a South American rather than global sense) to artists like Elton John and Elvis Costello.

We have some definite favourites among these bands, one in particular is the hugely popular Chancho en Piedra, a Chilean funk band known for wearing cool stage outfits and having fans who bring dressed up porky pigs to gigs.

Chancho en Piedra - awesome outfits!

Chancho en Piedra is actually a spicy tomato sauce usually put on meat in Chile. We have no idea why the band is called this, nor why the sauce is called this - as chancho is pig in Spanish, and piedra is stone. Neither of these things are particularly odd, band names don't have to make sense, and imagine trying to explain, say, Toad in the Hole to a Chilean...

Let's go Chancho: 

...and again:

Whoop!

You may have noticed that the pig element has been picked up by fans who buy these yellow plastic porky pigs and dress them up. Here's a few more pictures of sartorial chanchos:

Slash chancho, and Gene Simmons chancho

some sort of superhero chancho, and one with a red hat

a bit dark, but worth it - it's Barcelona chancho!

Supergirl, some sort of bear and a smurf?

Look carefully, it is, yes, BA Barracus chancho! He wins.

While looking at the crowd, we finally managed to achieve what one of our friends had asked us to - to get a photo of a Chileno with long hair held in place by a thin black elasticated hairband, an iconic figure for sure. So hopefully this will do the job: 

And the obligatory pic of a stray dog, they really will sleep anywhere:

Another of the artists that really stood out for us was an Argentinian called Fito Paez. He's rock royalty down here, having been around for years going from a sort of poodle haired Michael Bolton lookalike in the 80's to something approximating Elvis Costello now.

He was fab, here's a bit of video:

Ole, ole, ole, ole - FITO - FITO! 

Now a bit more samba styleee from earlier in the day: 

To finish with, as we didn't get any video of them ourselves, a youtube clip of one of the most-loved bands in Chile, the folk outfit Los Jaivas (The Crabs). 

On the way home, outside of the park we found where all the interesting food was. This is a "kebab van" Chilean style, huge sausages and, in that big pan, Guatitas - basically tripe and onions... 

Good times! Chao!