Rethinking Post-Authoritarian Chile through Its Popular Music

Music and Dictatorship in Europe and Latin America, edited by Roberto Illiano and Massimiliano Sala (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers), 2010

POPULAR MUSIC AND SOCIETY, 2020

In contemporary Chile the “new” Nueva Canción Chilena movement has been actively defying the legacy of the neoliberal fascist counterrevolution imposed by the dictatorship. In this context, Manuel García constructs his poetics via a combination of rock, the troubadour tradition, and various Latin American popular genres, while Aldo Asenjo [La Floripondio; El Chico Trujillo; El Bloque Depresivo] has been recuperating long-marginalized musical forms, such as cumbia chilombiana and canción cebolla. I argue that what guides these projects is a pursuit of authenticity by means of enacting auralscapes that have affectively shaped Chilean cultural memory, and in a way its 1960s predecessors were not in a position to accomplish.

This essay explores the ways in which middle-class Chilean university students in the mid-nineteen sixties channelled their social discontent through diverse popular music practices of a critical nature. These practices may be characterised both in terms of their venues, circumstances of production and types of public, as well as their musical, literary, performative and productive resources. The interplay of these musical practices with their social and cultural environment and the degree of awareness they manifest within mass culture may determine the critical nature of such practices. I will explore the dialogues between critical popular music with other arts such as poetry, theatre, design and photography, as well as with the two other musical practices that surround popular music: classical and folk music. Estes sons, esta linguagem. Essays on Music, Meaning and Society in Honour of Mário Vieira de Carvalho. Gilbert Stöck, Paulo Ferreira de Castro, and Katrin Stöck eds. Leipzig: Gudrun Schröder Verlag: 183-194.

Popular Music , 2019

Latin American Perspectives, 2023

Two protest songs created within the first month of the 2019 Chilean uprising were intended as explicit statements against violence and in favor of peace, but they voiced different understandings of violence and proposed different ways out of the conflict. The artists behind each song argued that their recordings were nonpartisan, cutting across traditional left-right divides. The songs' use and reception, however, shows that for Chilean audiences these songs conveyed a clear political cleavage through their lyrics, music, and audiovisual content. More broadly, consideration of music in the Chilean uprising foregrounds the ways in which the uses of music have changed since the classic era of protest song of the 1960s and 1970s.

Comunicación y Medios, 2019

Based on a database of 194 films made between 1994 and 2019, this article offers an exploratory study of the contemporary Chilean music documentary film, providing analytical categories and research questions. These categories help understand the strategies that filmmakers use to analyze musical matters from a documentary perspective. I argue that music documentary is inscribed within the so-called "turn towards the intimate" of Chilean documentary more broadly as well as within the production on memory in the post-dictatorship both in the fields of documentary film and music historiography.

Chasqui, 2004

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Iberoamericana, 2013

This article shows how various artists segued out of the cultural blackout of the late seventies and into a phase of surprising artistic production during the military regime in Chile. At a time when political parties were banned and public gatherings considered illegal, Chileans found alternative ways to oppose the military government. In this climate, I argue that artistic expression took on political meaning. The fact that the "No" Campaign of 1988 was able to oust the dictator with an optimistic message of joy and hope, attests to the point that Chileans were able to shed their fears and change their outlook. Throughout the decade, the arts-innovations in poetry, music, theater, narrative and the audiovisual media-had offered people a much-needed forum for expression.

All music can be used to create meaning and identity, but music born in a repressive political environment, in which freedom is lacking, changes the dynamic and actually facilitates that creation of meaning. This article explores some practices of protest related to pop music under dictatorship, -specifically the Argentine military dictatorship of 1976-83- and what happens once their raison d’etre, the repressive regime, is removed. We examine pre- and post-dictatorship music styles in recent Argentine pop: rock in the 1970s-80s and the current cumbia villera culture, in order to shed light on the relative roles of politics, economy and culture in the creation of pop music identity.

2016

This article shows how various artists segued out of the cultural blackout of the late seventies and into a phase of surprising artistic production during the military regime in Chile. At a time when political parties were banned and public gatherings considered illegal, Chileans found alternative ways to oppose the military government. In this climate, I argue that artistic expression took on political meaning. The fact that the "No" Campaign of 1988 was able to oust the dictator with an optimistic message of joy and hope, attests to the point that Chileans were able to shed their fears and change their outlook. Throughout the decade, the arts-innovations in poetry, music, theater, narrative and the audiovisual media-had offered people a much-needed forum for expression.