Formation (2000–2002) creator and main composer of the group A first band named MediaBanda and formed by Pato Zúñiga, Cristián Crisosto, Jaime Vivanco, Willy Valenzuela, Raúl González, Sergio Pinto, and Miguel Schain, began to operate at the beginning of the 1980s as a group that explored the fusion of
rock,
funk,
jazz, and
free improvisation, also inspired in
Rock in Opposition movement. From this formation there was only one unpublished
demo. However, when Crisosto and Vivanco joined the rest of the final members, decided to make new music and change the name to "
Fulano", starting a great career from 1984 to 2015, leaving an indelible mark in the history of
Chilean music. It is later to the album
Trabajos Inútiles (Useless Works, 1997) by Fulano that Cristián Crisosto began an ambitious personal composition project, which in the year 2000 is concretized by putting together a new band, with his wife
Arlette Jequier (voice), their daughter Regina Crisosto (voice), and seven other young musicians; Santiago Astaburuaga, (bass), Christian Hirth (drums), Daniel Linker (piano), Diego Aguirre (guitar), Sebastián Dintrans (guitar), Patricio Bracamonte (trombone), Marcelo Maira (flute and sax), taking up the previous name of MediaBanda. This is how the current Mediabanda was born.
First period (2003–2010) After a long period of rehearsals and workshop work to put together the complex compositions of Crisosto, Mediabanda launched in June 2004 its first album entitled
Entre la inseguridad y el ego (Between Insecurity and Ego), financed thanks to the support of Fondart with a concert in the theater of the Centro Arte Alameda. The album stands out for its great musical eclecticism, compositional complexity and richness of sound, in songs that walk with ease through rock, funk, salsa, afro-latin rhythms, pop melodies, jazz arrangements, avant-garde music and even at times, classical music. At the end of 2004, the faculty of the Escuela Moderna de Música awarded MediaBanda the prize for best band of the year, and Wikén magazine of the newspaper
El Mercurio qualifies the group as the best new Chilean artist. As a result of the reception of the critics and the public, they are invited to participate in the 4th
Providencia Jazz International Festival, sharing the stage with international artists such as
Paquito D'Rivera,
Yellowjackets,
Lito Vitale and others. Later they would also act in
Centro Cultural Matucana 100 next to Akineton Retard, between other presentations of the period. In April 2005 he won his second Fondart project, which included a national tour that took place during the months of October and November. In April 2006, they won for the third time a Fondart project to finance their second record production
Dinero y Terminación Nerviosa (Money and nerve endings) which was recorded in January 2007 and launched in June of the same year in two concerts at the Centro Arte Alameda. The album was a double CD where their style of fusion rock, jazz, and contemporary music develops, consolidating the group as one of the most important of the Latin American progressive fusion style. This time the composition was also open to Hirth and Dintrans, in addition to notable experimental improvisations from Jequier, Hirth and Astaburuaga. A week later, they embark on a trip to Europe for a month and a half, performing in various halls, auditoriums and festivals such as the
Nuits du Sud Festival in
Vence France, and others in
Spain,
Germany, the
Netherlands,
Czech Republic,
Austria and
Italy. Upon returning to Chile, they would perform at the Teatro Oriente next to
Congreso and Akineton Retard. Later also with the experimental percussion group Code, in the same theater. In 2010 they released a new album called
Siendo Perro (Being dog), with a new line-up which highlights the harmonic use of guitars as a replacement for the piano, and the incorporation of funk, and hard rock to the already avant-garde jazz-rock fusion.
Siendo Perro was released without the voice of Arlette Jequier, what glimpsed the beginning of the breaks within the band and that led to a silence of more than two years.
Second period (2013 – present) In mid-2013, a new line up for the second age of MediaBanda was gathered, including six new members. In 2014 they participate in the celebration of the 30 years of the
Fulano group, held at the Nescafé Theater of Arts together with
Santiago del Nuevo Extremo, Pedro Foncea (from
De Kiruza), and Angelo Pierattini (from
Weichafe). During this period the group made a series of performances re-opening a large part of the repertoire, which also had the collaboration of Consuelo Schuster and Celeste Shaw in voices and that coincided with an important rotation of musicians in the base formation. During 2016 they composed and recorded their highly anticipated new album,
Bombas en el Aire (Bombs in the Air), which premiered in January 2017 in a crowded Sala SCD in
Plaza Egaña. The following week they are presented with great success at the Woodstaco Festival 2017 in
Maule Region, before thousands of people, then continuing the album presentations in
Valparaíso Region. It was recorded in CHT Estudios as a musical workshop experiment instead of the usage of scores that had been the fundamental support in the early days. During the months of July and August they went on tour to
Mexico which included presentations in the
Jalisco Jazz Festival in
Guadalajara, the
FestivAlterNativo in
Querétaro, in addition to the cultural circuit of
Mexico City. Back in Chile, they performed a series of presentations with other avant-garde bands such as
Crisis (by Nicolás Vera and Cristián Gallardo),
Sube,
Zet,
Cola de Zorro,
Aisles,
Fósil and
Ojo de Pez among others. In January 2018, they participated in the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the
Woodstaco Festival in
Teno. Since late 2018 they are presenting the show "Mediabanda Plays Fulano", premiered on November 16, 2018, at the Teatro Oriente with guests such as Pablo Ilabaca (from
Chancho en Piedra), Nicolás Vera, Consuelo Schuster, and
Como asesinar a Felipes, paying tribute to the music of the mythical Chilean fusion band
Fulano, and in particular to the great maestro
Jaime Vivanco, performed with new arrangements by Tomás Ravassa on keyboards, and Aurelio Silva on guitar, in a staging that wastes energy and attitude. Given their success, they have continued to perform at venues such as the Valparaíso and Quilpué Jazz Festivals, Teatro San Joaquín, and La Batuta in
Ñuñoa. In January 2020 they release the first single from their upcoming new album entitled
Maquinarias (Machinery) in tribute to Fulano, with the classic
anti-authoritarian satire ''
, at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights and in the context of the Social Outbreak. After production delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the album Maquinarias'' was finally released on July 1, 2021, on streaming and CD. The album is dedicated to composer Jaime Vivanco who tragedly died in 2003, and contains ten new arrangements of his compositions in Fulano, which had the collaboration of the Ilabaca brothers (from
Chancho en Piedra), the actor and folklorist
Daniel Muñoz, and singer Consuelo Schuster, among others. == Musical style ==