CONGREGACION - Mengano (Rock Chileno)

Congregación is one of the most legendary and obscure bands of the Chilean musical scene from the early 70s. Led by musician and poet Antonio Smith, the band offered songs with a high eco philosophical-religious meaning and composed Andean styled ballads with ethnic atmospheres and feelings. They recorded an only LP, "Congregación Viene...", in 1972, and it's, in my opinion, one of the best records of the Chilean rock history and one of the lost gems of Latin American rock music. I already did a video with the first track of that album, "Estrecha a tu hermano". This year the independent US label Aroma released a reissue of that album with a solid gatefold cover (lamentablely not laminated) and a very nice inner sleeve with the lyrics and the story of the band. After so many years finally Congregación has had a great reissue in vinyl (even though the quality of the sound seems to have lost a lil bit of warmth of the original). Where the labels Akarma or Shadoks were?...

Congregación is one of my favorite bands, original vinyls are hard-to-find records and I have that LP in the original 2 issues (different colour of labels), the original poster, lamentablely not reissued by Aroma, and 3 singles. And so I decided to do this video because this reissue pretends to be an exact copy of the original and so they didn't include 2 songs of Congregación not in the original LP. One of them, "Mengano", the B-side of the single "Estrecha a tu hermano" and "Y regresarás a tu cuarto" (by Antonio I, B-side of "Arrebol"). These songs appear as tracks 12 and 13 in the CD issue of Congregación given away with the number 28 (code "Sampler nº28") of the magazine "Arte & Rock" as part of the serie "Historia de la Música Latino-Americana" (History of Latin American Music). I have both issues of the CD, same CD but different cases.

Well, one of those songs not in this Aroma reissue LP is "Mengano", I like this song and I guess it was a serious fault not to put this song as a bonus track. But, it's OK, here it's the chance to listen that song watching some pics of the Aroma vinyl, original singles and the CD... Inner cover reproduces part of the original poster with very nice drawings... I'm sure I can recognize Antonio Smith in more than one drawing... I hope all of you enjoy this great song and, as I always say, all comments are welcomed...

Category:

Music

Tags:

• congregacion
• mengano
• rock
• chileno
• psych
• folk
• blops
• jaivas
• chile