Luis Le-Bert

He studied at the National Institute , an emblematic school. Luis entered the architecture faculty of the University of Chile in 1973 , the same year that Augusto Pinochet's coup d'état would break . This castrating event of the music of the new Chilean song , would be the basis for the formation of the first musical movement born under the military regime; the Canto Nuevo , in which Lucho would be a protagonist.

They were born in 1978, in the middle of that year Luis Le-Bert returned to Santiago, after aborting a career at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso . Together with Pedro Villagra (then a student of Anthropology, at the University of Chile) and Jorge Campos (student of Aesthetics, at the Catholic University), they constituted the historical axis of Santiago del Nuevo Extremo. Together with Julio Castillo and Luis Pérez, they formed the quintet. They were four guitars and a double bass, performing mainly in university faculties. His authorial style and his promotional system have responded during this time to an unrestricted autonomy, maintaining him as a credible and worthy voice, although marginal to mass diffusion.

In 1980 they recorded their first album, A mi ciudad, which is the group's most popular to date. Songs like "Simply" (a statement of daily life), "Homenaje" (a greeting to the memory of Víctor Jara) or "A mi ciudad" (a description of life in Santiago, with references to the history and the touch of remains) were hymns of the time for the sectors opposed to the military dictatorship. A little direct lyric, whose main person in charge was Le-Bert, was part of the group's discourse, which in this way faced possible military censorship: "This is how they spoke at that time. They said things without saying them," he recalls today day the composer. In 1981, the song "Linda la minga", which narrated the traditional Chiloe custom

Associated with the Canto Nuevo movement, Santiago del Nuevo Extremo transcended that genre due to the growth of its musical proposal. His second album, Hasta Encuentros (1983), had more set of voices and instrumental innovations, such as the strong presence of Villagra's transverse flute. The group traveled to show it in Europe and America, gave massive recitals at the Café del Cerro , the Cariola theater and universities, and accumulated a popularity that, fundamentally, continued to be anchored in the repertoire of the first album. With repeated line-up changes (with the exception of the Le-Bert-Villagra-Campos axis), the group maintained a high rate of presentations until their third album, Barricadas(1985), in which sound experimentation became the essence of the sextet. Drums, saxophone, electric bass, charango and keyboards became fundamental in their sound. "On the first album, any song could be sung over a campfire. On the third, hopefully half," Le-Bert illustrates. The album included the song "La medio fajana", recorded together with Inti-Illimani in Germany, in what was the consequence of a mutual admiration between both groups, expressed in several meetings in foreign stages.

The same year that Chile recovered democracy, the Luis Le-Bert (1989) cassette confirmed the author's intention to stay in music, now without the band with which he had agitated an important part of the artistic resistance to Augusto Pinochet. This production also supported his commitment to working in two bands between music and architecture, the formal profession that Le-Bert concluded during the '70s and which he has exercised since then, in parallel to his work as a singer-songwriter. The Calacalacaaaa album !!! (2007) recorded a new fusion of genres, in a format identified by the author as «cueca-blues», although also integrating jazz codes and urban themes. It was recorded together with the group Los Agricultores del Cosmos, made up of people already experienced, such as bassist Juan Caballero and percussionist Carlos Basilio (Framework ). By introducing it, Le-Bert once again positioned himself as a fringe of the great record industry, in which he says “I don't fit because I haven't changed. I'm still the same person who claims not to understand the exchange of anything. He demonstrates it through continuous recitals on the outskirts of Santiago or by supporting the organized resistance in Aysén, armed only with his guitar, confident that his music should reach the people directly.

• Luis Le-Bert (1989 - Alerce)
• Calacalacaaaa!!! (2007 - Autoedition)
• El combo cuequero (2010 - Autoedition)
• Canciones fundamentales (2019)
• En Santiago del Nuevo Extremo

• A mi ciudad (1981 - Alerce)
• Hasta encontrarnos (1983 - Alerce)
• Barricadas (1985 - Alerce)
• Salvo tú y yo (2000 - Autoedition)
• Leuda (2011 - Trompe)
• Santiago del Nuevo Extremo (2016 - Autoedition)