Music as Memory and Torture: Sounds of Repression and Protest in Chile and Argentina
2004; CIESPAL; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/29741848
ISSN2327-4247
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoFew cultural movements, writes Albrecht Moreno, had as profound an effect on social histories of their time as has New Song movement in Chile (108). Nueva Canci?n, as music called, played a significant political role in periods preceding and during Salvador Allende's socialist Unidad Popular government in Chile. This new type of folk/protest music supported emergence of Allende's Popular Front. Singer-songwriters and bands such as Violeta Parra, Victor Jara, Inti-Illimani, Patricio Manns, Quilapay?n, Margot Loyola, Grupo Cuncum?n and others criticized exploitation of working class while exalting populist socialism.1 Nueva Canci?n, then, both oppositional and supportive?it took form as a move? ment that protested injustice at same time as it supported establishment of Allende's government. The new song movement quickly became a Pan-Latin American phenomenon, a call for social justice from Left. Chilean Nueva Canci?n's left-wing political agenda overlapped with a discursive project of cultural recovery and memory. Musicians in Nueva Canci?n movement embraced indigenous instruments and rhythms thus rejecting both imperialism associated with U.S. popular culture and Latin American elite's dismissal of indigenous culture. Poncho-wearing musicians sang Andean songs in rallies, striving to bring the people together to change a government that benefited a small ruling class over masses of impoverished Chileans. In some cases, songs recalled specific injustices from history, in others they resurrected musically a sometimes mythical autochthonous past. Their task, writes Mark Mattern, was to 'recover past,' to 'recover memory of their origins' and to find their 'lost race' (40). Whereas Chilean elite had tradi? tionally rejected or ignored indigenous culture and any notion that they might have native roots, new song artists celebrated a connection with indigenous history. Rejecting capitalism and valo? rizing an idealized version of traditional culture, nueva canci?n asserted a new version of Chilean identity.
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