Daniel Puente Encina

Education and Career

Daniel Puente Encina began teaching himself music at the age of four. On his twelfth birthday, he father gave him a guitar and an hour's lesson. As an adolescent, he studied Musicology and Sociology at the University of Chile.

Los Pinochet Boys (1984–1987)

In his native Chile, he is better known as "Daniel Puente" o "Dani Puente", founder, lead singer and bass player of the anti-fascist new wave/post-punk group Pinochet Boys formed with a few friends in the Santiago of the mid-1980s, one of the most repressive periods of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship. His first group, it formed part of the Chilean revolution, as noted in a number of books, documentaries and the fourth episode of Chilean drama TV series Los 80 by Canal 13. In 1984, Carlos Fonseca, a friend of the group and presenter of the programme Fusión contemporánea on Santiago's Radio Beethoven station, offered them a contract with the record company Fusión, owned by his father Mario Fonseca, on the condition that they changed its provocative name –something the group refused to do. The contract was later offered to group Los Prisioneros. Los Pinochet Boys' clandestine concerts were routinely broken up by the police shortly after they began, soon sparking to a youth movement in the Chilean capital. Its four members were harassed, threatened and persecuted for their irreverent attitude and wild performances, and often arrested for having dyed hair. In 1987, after only three years together, Los Pinochet Boys were unofficially forced by the military regime to leave the country. After almost two years of organising their own concerts and touring with, amongst others, the Inocentes and Plebe Rude in Brazil and Todos Tus Muertos in Argentina, the group returned to Chile to play an active role in the No campaign for the Chilean national plebiscite, 1988, which put an end to Pinochet's regime. Their sole musical legacy consisted of two cassette recordings: "Botellas contra el pavimento"/"En mi tiempo libre" and "La música del general"/"Esto es Pinochet Boys", which have been copied on numerous occasions over the past decades. In 2012, record company Hueso Records from New York remastered both to produce a 500-copy limited edition 7-inch record entitled Pinochet Boys.

Niños Con Bombas (1994–1999)

In 1989, after travelling through Europe, "Daniel Puente" moved to West Berlin a few months before fall of the Wall. There, he became friends with members of Einstürzende Neubauten, who would later on play an important role introducing him to a wider audience. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Puente Encina settled in Hamburg, where he founded the multicultural group Niños Con Bombas, sharing the stage with a number of bands from the so-called Hamburger Schule indie scene, such as Tocotronic, Blumfeld and Die Goldenen Zitronen. In 1995, Niños Con Bombas won the "John Lennon Talent Award" and signed deals with Stuttgart label Intercord and New York-based international alternative Latin record company Grita! Records, founded by Bad Religion's original drummer Jay Ziskrout. The band released two albums: Niños Con Bombas de tiempo en el momento de la explosión (1996) and El Niño (1997). Due to the MTV Music Television Video Rotation and radio airplays, songs such as Skreamska and Postcard were popular in Europe, South America and the US, which the group toured in 1997, with concerts in New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Virginia, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1998, they played in front of a crowd of 90,000 at the Rock al Parque festival in Bogotá, Colombia and, in 1999, at Austin's South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Festival, with The New York Times saying "one of the most interesting performances was that of Niños Con Bombas". In South America, Puente Encina and his group toured countries such as Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia and performed its alternative Latin Jazz-Ska-Rock sound in Europe as openers for Einstürzende Neubauten. In 1999, Niños Con Bombas moved to Los Angeles, but due to internal differences split shortly afterwards.

Polvorosa (2000–2011)

In 2000, Puente Encina moved back to Europe and began performing and producing under the name "Polvorosa" in Barcelona, Spain. Once again changing musical direction, he created a new style: "Latin-Elektro-Clash". "Polvorosa" toured Europe and, as openers for Chambao and Ojos de Brujo, the entire Iberian peninsula. In 2004, he released the album Radical Car Dance. The track Behind de mi House became known worldwide after its video, created by German film director Marten Persiel, was chosen by MTV Music Television for its 2004 DVD compendium "Los Vídeos Mas Espectaculares" ("The Most Spectacular Videos"). In 2009, Puente Encina abandoned electronica in favour of a more natural feel and more organic sound. The end result was a mix of Latin, desert rock, jazz and world music. In 2011, he was chosen by Spanish nonprofit organization Instituto Cervantes in Tel Aviv to give a number of concerts in Israel.

Solo career

In 2012, Daniel Puente Encina recorded his first album under his own name: Disparo, a blues-based work noteworthy for the minimalism of its instrumentation. Its ten tracks included an updated version of "Botellas contra el pavimento" by way of a personal tribute to his first band, "Pinochet Boys". The album was released in spring 2012 and launched in his native Chile, with a subsequent tour of Spain, Germany and Denmark. In 2013, before continuing with his German tour, with the support of Catalan governmental organisation Institut Ramon Llull, he invited New York soul singer Mónica Green, granddaughter of Margaret "Maggie" Price of The-Cabineers, to the studio to take part in the recording of new versions of Lío and Mike Tysonboth songs from this album, to give the chorus a touch of Motown.

July 2014 saw Puente Encina release Chocolate con Ají (Chocolate with Chilli), the second album under his own name, containing a mixture of genres and described on his website as a personal "Best Of" album, a compilation of his favourite previously unreleased compositions. It reflects a wide variety of styles ranging from South American music, rhythm and blues and Caribbean sounds. He promoted the album in Denmark, during the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, in Germany and Italy and began another European tour in 2015. Puente Encina was invited by the Cuban Music Institute's National Centre for Popular Music to give four performances at the 31st "Jazz Plaza" Havana International Jazz Festival in December 2015.

Style and influences

Daniel Puente Encina has created—and recreated—a number of different styles of music. With Los Pinochet Boys, he offered a mix of new wave and post-punk. With Niños Con Bombas, he fused Latin, jazz, ska and rock with punk elements. In 2004, under the name 'Polvorosa, he invented a new style he dubbed "Latin-Elektro-Clash". 2012's Disparo is a minimalist, blues-based album fusing R&B, Son cubano, Reggae and Bolero elements with African and Afro-Peruvian rhythms. His 2014 album Chocolate con Ají mixes South American musical influences, rhythm and blues and Caribbean music, providing a listening experience embracing everything from boogaloo blues, 60s Latin soul, samba funk and Latin rap to Dixie country ska, slow swing and indie-Cuban ballads. According to his website, he calls such creations "Furious Latin Soul", "Dirty Boogaloo", "Rebel Tango" and "Dixie Country Ska". Although he mainly sings in Spanish, Puente Encina occasionally uses a mix of different languages in his lyrics. With Niños Con Bombas, he wrote songs such as Ton Ego n'est pas toi, sung partly in French. With Polvorosa, he sang in Portuñol, a mix of Portuguese and Spanish, in English and Spanish alone, and also in Spanglish, the mix of the latter two languages used mainly by the Latino community in the US. He plays a variety of guitars when performing, frequently swapping between his Dobro, resonator, 1962 Höfner electric and Camps classical guitars.

Film and TV

In the 1990s, Niños Con Bombas caught the eye of Turkish-German film director Fatih Akin, who contacted Daniel Puente Encina, marking the start of long working relationship. Puente Encina's songs Cocomoon and Nunca Diré formed part of the soundtrack of the Akin's first feature, 1998's crime film Short Sharp Shock. Puente Encina also composed songs such as El Amor se demora and Ramona for the director's road movie Im Juli (in July 2000), in which he had a cameo role with Niños Con Bombas, singing the song Velocidad. He also wrote the song Not here for the multi-award-winning drama film Head On (2004). In 2012, Daniel Puente Encina was interviewed during his Chilean tour by Joe Vasconcellos for El baile de los que sobran, a documentary on singer Jorge González, as well as by Alfredo Lewin for the Via X TV programme Red Hot Chilean People, for which he also performed five songs live. Lewin was a famous MTV video jockey and had previously interviewed Puente Encina in the 90s for MTV Latin America in Miami. In April 2015, Daniel Puente Encina played a supporting role as "Sadler", P.E.N. congress visitor in Buenos Aires, in Maria Schrader's film Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (Original title in German: Vor der Morgenröte), nominated for the Deutscher Filmpreis 2016 in two categories: Maria Schrader for Best Director and Barbara Sukowa for Best Supporting Actress.

Pinochet Boys

Niños Con Bombas

Polvorosa

Solo Albums

Awards