Nueva canción
Nueva canción is a left-wing social movement and musical genre in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, characterized by folk-inspired styles and socially committed lyrics. Nueva canción is widely recognized to have played a profound role in the pro-democracy social upheavals in Portugal, Spain and Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s, and was popular amongst socialist organizations in the region.
Songs reflecting conflict have a long history in Spanish, and in Latin America were particularly associated with the "corrido" songs of Mexico's War of Independence after 1810, and the early 20th century years of Revolution. Nueva canción then surfaced almost simultaneously during the 1960s in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Spain. The musical style emerged shortly afterwards in other areas of Latin America where it came to be known under similar names. Nueva canción renewed traditional Latin American folk music, and was soon associated with revolutionary movements, the Latin American New Left, liberation theology, hippie and human rights movements due to political lyrics. It would gain great popularity throughout Latin America, and left an imprint on several other genres like rock en español, cumbia and Andean music.
Nueva canción musicians often faced censorship, exile, torture, death, or forceful disappearances by the wave of right-wing military dictatorships that swept across Latin America and the Iberian peninsula in the Cold War era, e.g. in Francoist Spain, Pinochet's Chile, Salazar's Portugal and Videla and Galtieri's Argentina.
Due to their strongly political messages, some nueva canción songs have been used in later political campaigns, for example the Orange Revolution, which used Violeta Parra's "Gracias a la vida". Nueva canción has become part of Latin American and Iberian musical tradition, but is no longer a mainstream genre, and has given way to other genres, particularly rock en español.
Characteristics
"Nueva canción" is a type of music which is committed to social good. Its musical and lyrical vernacular is rooted in the popular classes and often uses a popularly understood style of satire to advocate for sociopolitical change. The movement reacted against the dominance of American and European music in Latin America at the time by assuming an anti-imperial stance that was markedly less focused on the visual spectacle of commercial music and more focused on social and political messages. It characteristically talks about poverty, empowerment, imperialism, democracy, human rights, religion, and the Latin American identity.Nueva canción draws heavily upon Andean music, música negra, Spanish music, Cuban music and other Latin American folklore. Most songs feature the guitar, and often the quena, zampoña, charango or cajón. The lyrics are typically in Spanish, with some indigenous or local words mixed in, and frequently utilize the poetic forms of copla and décima.
Nueva canción was explicitly related to leftist politics, advancing leftist ideals and flourishing within the structure of the Communist Party in Latin America. Cuban cultural organization Casa de las Américas hosted many notable gatherings of nueva canción musicians, including the 1967 Encuentro de la Canción Protesta.
Songs of conflict in Spanish have a very long history, with elements to be found in the "fronterizos", songs concerning the Reconquest of Spain from the Moors in the 15th century. More immediately, some of the roots of nueva canción may be seen in the Mexican "corrido", which took on a strongly political flavour during the War of Independence, and then the Revolution after 1910. The modern nueva canción developed in the historical context of the "folklore boom" that occurred in Latin America in the 1950s. Chilean Violeta Parra and Argentine Atahualpa Yupanqui were two transitional figures as their mastery of folk music and personal involvement in leftist political organizations aided the eventual union of the two in Nueva canción. The movement was also aided by legislation like Juan Perón's Decreto 3371/1949 de Protección de la Música Nacional and Law No. 14,226, which required that half of the music played on the radio or performed live be of national origin.
National manifestations of nueva canción began occurring in the late 1950s. The earliest were in Chile and Spain, where the movement promoted Catalan language and culture. The music quickly spread to Argentina and throughout Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s. Various national movements used their own terminology; however, the term "nueva canción" was adopted at the 1967 Encuentro de la Canción Protesta and has thereafter been used as an all-encompassing term. Though Nueva canción is often considered a Pan-Latino phenomenon, national manifestations were varied and reacted to local political and cultural contexts.
Regional manifestations
Chile: ''Nueva Canción Chilena'' (New Chilean Song)
Since 1952, Violeta Parra, together with her children, gathered a total of 3,000 songs of peasant origin, and also released a book known as "Cantos Folklóricos Chilenos". In addition, Violeta's children Isabel and Ángel founded the cultural center Peña de los Parra, an organization that functioned as an organizing center for leftist political activism, and welcomed almost all of the major figures associated with early Nueva Canción, including Chileans: Patricio Manns, Víctor Jara, Rolando Alarcón, Payo Grondona, Patricio Castillo, Sergio Ortega, Homero Caro, Tito Fernández, and Kiko Álvarez, as well as non-Chilean musicians, such as Atahualpa Yupanqui from Argentina and Paco Ibañéz of Spain.Nueva Canción Chilena moved out of small gathering places like Peña de los Parra in 1968 when the Communist Youth Party of Chile pressed 1000 copies of the album Por Vietnam by Quilapayún to raise funds for the band's travel to the International Youth Festival in Bulgaria. The copies sold out unexpectedly, a strong demonstration of the popular demand for this new music. In response, La Jota created Discoteca de Canto Popular, a socially-conscious record label that grew in its five years of operation from a 4,000 record operation in 1968 to pressing over 240,000 records in 1973. DICAP united the various groups of young people wishing to spread Nueva Cancion at a time when U.S. music dominated chiefly commercial radio fare. "DICAP was a key counterhegemonic institution that broke through the censorship and silence imposed by the conservative cultural entities of the elite."
In 1969 the Universidad Cátolica in Santiago hosted the Primer Festival de la Nueva Canción Chilena. Salvador Allende's 1970 presidential campaign was a major turning point in the history of Nueva Canción Chilena. Many artists became involved in the campaign; songs like "Venceremos" by Víctor Jara were widely used in Allende rallies. After Allende's election, nueva canción artists were utilized as a pro-Allende public relations machine inside and outside of Chile. By 1971, groups like Inti-Illimani and Quilapayún were receiving financial support from the Allende government.
In 1973, the United States/CIA-backed right-wing military coup overthrew Allende's democratic government, bombing the presidential palace. Pinochet's forces then rounded up 5,000 civilians into a soccer stadium for interrogation, torture, and execution. Victor Jara was beaten, tortured, and his wrists were broken, after several days he was executed and shot 44 times. His wife Joan Jara writes, "where his belly ought to have been was a gory, gaping void". Because of his popularity and fame in the music world, Jara is the most well-known victim of a regime that killed or "disappeared" at least 3,065 people and tortured more than 38,000, bringing the number of victims to 40,018. Other musicians, such as Patricio Manns and groups Inti-Illimani and Quilapayún, found safety outside the country. Under Augusto Pinochet nueva canción recordings were seized, burned, and banned from the airwaves and record stores. The military government exiled and imprisoned artists and went as far as to ban many traditional Andean instruments in order to suppress the nueva canción movement. This period in Chilean history is known as the "Apagón Cultural".
By late 1975, artists had begun to circumvent these restrictions through so-called "Andean Baroque" ensembles that performed standards of the Western classical repertoire on indigenous South American instruments. These performances took place in the politically neutral environments of churches, community centers, and the few remaining peñas. For this reason, and because of the novelty of the concept, these performances were allowed to continue without government interference. Performers gradually grew bolder, incorporating some of old nueva canción repertoire, though carefully avoiding overtly political topics. Artists began calling this music "Canto Nuevo", a term selected to both reference and distance the new movement from the former nueva canción. Because of the precarious political circumstances in which it existed, canto nuevo is notable for its use of highly metaphorical language, allowing songs to evade censors by disguising political messages beneath layers of symbolism. Live performances often included spoken introductions or interludes that provided insight into the song's real meaning.
As the 1980s arrived, advances in recording technology allowed supporters to informally exchange cassettes outside of the governmental control. An economic crisis forced Chilean television stations to hire cheaper Chilean performers rather than international stars for broadcast bookings, while a relaxation in government restrictions allowed canto nuevo performers to participate in several major popular music festivals. Increasing public recognition of the movement facilitated the gathering of its participants at events such as the Congreso de Artistas y Trabajadores in 1983. The canto nuevo repertoire began to diversify, incorporating cosmopolitan influences such as electronic instruments, classical harmonies, and jazz influences.
Though the genre is not especially active today, the legacy of figures like Violeta Parra is enormous. Parra's music continues to be recorded by contemporary artists and her song "Gracias a la Vida" was recorded by supergroup Artists for Chile in an effort to raise relief funds in the wake of the 2010 Chilean earthquake. The protests that began in October 2019 showed a strong resurgence of Nueva Canción as curfewed residents began performing the music of Violeta Parra and Victor Jara
and soon major artists began adapting and writing politically motivated music backing the protests and critical of the Piñera government.