History          Historia

The group TRANSPORTE URBANO was launched on 6 October 1982, by students at the former State Technical University (now the University of Santiago de Chile), led by current vocalist Oscar Riveros.  The group started out busking on the Santiago public transport system.  As well as giving the group its name (‘Urban Transport’), this experience helped the members to pay for their studies and also provided an important public stage for the group’s ideas and music during a turbulent time in Chile’s political history.  In those early days, the group’s repertoire was a mixture of Latin American classics and original compositions.

The group soon built up an extensive repertoire of original compositions, and started to become well known everywhere in Chile that so-called ‘protest music’ had taken hold: peñas, poblaciones (working class housing districts) and on the university circuit.

In 1987 Transporte Urbano launched its first album, ‘¿A’ónde la viste?’, marked by the group’s initial style of mainly acoustic music with challenging social content, a grassroots identity and the distinctive ironic yet optimistic hallmark that its early followers had grown to expect and appreciate.  Over the years the group’s lineup changed, bringing with it changes in musical style.  From the third album (‘Ella’, 1990) on, the acoustic sound of the early years from 1982 was complemented by the introduction of electronic instruments like keyboards and electric guitar and bass.  The end result was a powerful Latin sound, in the style of many of the recently emerging bands of the region.  The new sound opened up various new musical vistas, and Transporte Urbano, without ever abandoning the tradition of intelligent lyrics with a grassroots social theme, started to develop and interesting line of work born out of the Chilean fusion of Latin American folk music, rock, salsa, cumbia, merengue, funk, bossa nova, reggae, sound and traditional ballads.  Listening to Transporte Urbano today is a little like taking a spin through the radio dial, sampling the various stations on offer.  The group calls this style ‘urban music’.

Transporte Urbano has based its musical offerings in the working class and university sectors of the capital ever since the early days.  However, it also has a large following in working class and university sectors of the country and beyond; as reflected in its inclusion on the playlists of various Latino radio stations in Europe as well as in an extensive tour of the south of Argentina in 1996.

Transporte Urbano has 6 albums to date:

The most recent album, ‘Sobrao ‘e Cariño’, was launched in June 2003 in the SCD Sala in Santiago.  The group’s albums are available from the music stall ‘Tata Inti’ in the Santa Lucia craft fair on the corner of the Alameda and Carmen street in Santiago.