Starting in the 1950s, Chile started to be influenced by the rise of American Rock and Roll, and soon, a new genre of Chilean rock, called ‘nueva ola,’ or new wave, quickly rose, with a handful of popular bands, which produced similar souts of sounds, but catered to their Chilean audiences with spanush lyrics. (Though there would often be usage of American or British names. Into the 1970s, the popular music took an experimental turn, parallel to that of British and American rock and it became a fusion of rock and traditional Latin American sounds.

But mainly the country was simply a poor country with strong folk traditions. One of the most notable acts of radical oppression happened just a few days into the coup, when folk singer, Victor Jara, the founder of the Nueva Cancion, a political movement fueled by folk music, [2] was captured and executed by the military. [1]