De Britse journaliste Jan Fairley heeft speciaal voor de heruitgave van Amankay een inleidende tekst geschreven. De volledige tekst volgt hieronder.

 

The New Song in Latin America

And will there be singing in the dark times? Bertolt Brecht
I sing the difference of what’s true and what’s false Violeta Parra Yo canto la diferencia

In Chile in 1970 ‘new song’ singer Víctor Jara stood on a platform alongside Salvador Allende – the first democratically elected socialist president in the world - supporting his egalitarian vision with other nueva canción singers and groups. Behind them was a giant banner saying, No hay revolución sin canciones – cantamos a la mujer, al obrero, al campesino y al estudiante. [There can be no revolution without songs – we sing to the woman, the worker, the peasant, the student.] In front of them stretching out as far as the eye could see was a sea of Chilean people - women, workers, peasants, students – all celebrating Allende’s victory.

Three years later both Jara and Allende were dead: Jara tortured, then machine gunned by Pinochet’s military, Allende dying in the bombed Moneda Palace. When in 1976 Chilean singer Patricio Manns was asked in exile about the power of ‘new song’ he spoke of songs, integrating as they do both music and words, as ‘bleeding more’ than poetry. At that time Manns and members of Quilapayún, Inti-Illimani, Isabel Parra, Angel Parra, Gustavo Becerra, Sergio Ortega and a host of other artists as well as hundreds and soon thousands of other Chileans, were living in exile, forced from their country to save their lives. Quilapayún and Inti-Illimani were incredibly lucky as they were touring outside Chile as the Popular Unity government’s Cultural Ambassadors on the fated 11 September 1973. Had they been at home in Santiago they would undoubtedly have been killed like their friend Víctor Jara.

While Quilpayún and Inti-Illimani were banished, they became the heart and soul of the solidarity movement, performing tirelessly night and day from their bases in Rome and Paris. And just as Chilean ‘new song’ had encapsulated the energy, desires and utopian hopes of the Popular Unity years, so outside Chile, after 1973, it symbolised that Chilean promise and struggle to the world. Indeed ‘new song’ flourished outside the country were it won new audiences who followed the musicians wherever they appeared.

In exile thousands of Chileans followed the example of the Quilas and Intis and (as they became known) and took up music. Such was the power and presence of ‘new song’ that Chileans who had not been that interested in it back home, save maybe singing Sergio Ortega’s anthems El pueblo unido or Venceremos on the streets, somehow got hold of the little armadillo shelled charangos, bamboo quena flutes, zampoña pan pipes and guitars. They taught themselves to play and sing the songs and music that had come to represented everything they had lost. They used ‘new song’ not only to tell their story to their new country, but also to help keep their battered souls alive.

‘New song’ is not of course confined to Chile, even though the country witnessed the strongest and most dramatic movement. It was and still is a continental tradition. Just as Violeta Para worked in Chile to collect from popular rural poets, so did Carlos Puebla in Cuba and Atahualpa Yupanqui in Argentina. One of the first initiatives of Nueva Canción came from a group of musicians in Argentina in the early 1960s, among them Mercedes Sosa, one of its longest-serving, most passionate singers. Her compatriots León Gieco and Víctor Heredia have helped her keep the flame alive. It thrived in Uruguay with Daniel Viglietti and Los Olimareños; in Brazil with Chico Buarque; in Mexico with Amparo Ochoa, Gabino Palomares and Los Folkloristas. Tania Libertad in Perú. In Venezuela the songs of Alí Primera took up the cause. In Nicaragua the Mejía Godoy Brothers, Carlos and Enrique made their volcanto a key part of the Sandinista struggle. Most influentially Silvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanes created nueva trova their ‘new song’, to voice the inner dreams, desires and experiences of Cubans working to create socialism every day within the revolution.

Back in the old world, in Spain, notably in Catalonia, Lluis Llach, María del Mar Bonet and Raímon created nova canço songs in their struggle to keep their language and culture alive during the Franco years. The spirit of Spanish ‘new song’ was alive in the music of Ana Belen, Víctor Manuel, Joaquín Sabina, Luís Eduardo Aute, Joan Manuel Serrat and others. Then in 1983 salsa star from Puerto Rico Rubén Blades created the disc Buscando America (Searching for America), incorporating South America’s central concerns of the tortured, dead and disappeared into its’ hottest dance music for the first time. Imbued with the spirit of ‘new song’, he encouraged people to dream of a different world in a continent kidnapped and gagged, exposing again the unhealthy role of North America in the affairs of South and Central America.

So what is the legacy today of these musicians whom Uruguayan poet Mario Benedetti has called the singing poets? As Rodríguez has said, Ask me for poems and even if we’re fucked I’ll do one! For him ‘new song’ is not about message or dogmatism, rather it is about, matices, capturing the subtle shades and distinctions of life, everything there is between black and white. If you can write text as poetry, there is always brave human message comes through as it’s your life that’s there.

After 1973, outside and inside Chile, the act of singing ‘new song’ itself came to signify political and social freedom. Amankay was part of a world that made Chile synonymous with music and creativity. Almost 40 years on singing ‘new song’ is not only an act of nostalgia for a world that existed in the moment, and for the lives that were sacrificed in the process of that struggle for a better world. It is testimony, love, critique, a means of accessing and bringing to life the collective memory of the people, of propelling the past and present into the future.

Way back in 1973 in his farewell speech just before he died, Allende said, Me diríjo a la juventud, a aquellos que cantaron y entregaron su alegría y su espíritu de lucha. (I address the young people, those who sang and gave their happiness and fighting spirit). Today other young people have taken up the mantle of struggle for a better world. As ever Amankay then and now sing to and for all!

Jan Fairley
Ethnomusicologist
Fellow Institute of Popular Music
University of Liverpool
www.janfairley.com