In addition to going down in history as symbol and martyr of the Pinochet coup in 1973, Victor Jara He left a substantial legacy of songs, with extreme poetic subtlety, folkloric attachment and concern for expanding the musical language. To all this, To the myth and his work as a singer, a concert paid tribute, ‘Mil veus per a Víctor Jara’as rich in political invective as in soft artistic nuances, this Sunday on Cathedral Avenue.
50 years ago Víctor Jara lived his tragic final hourl, and it had an emotional character that twinning of Chilean and Catalan voicesall gathered in the welcome theme, ‘The right to live in peace‘. Lyrics with a view to Vietnam, to the “poet Ho Chi Minh”, where “they burst the flower / with genocide and napalm.” Neat and extensive musical training, with direction by Borja Penalba and Marina Alcantudand a groundbreaking presence, the Mapuche rapper MC Millarayinjecting his powerful verb into ‘The Departure’ and evoking long-suffering testimonies from the days of the coup.
Bodies and graves
Jara’s repertoire covered a wide range of sound registers and the concert dealt with them, jumping from the galloping ‘The Revenant’, a piece inspired by Che Guevara to which he joined Ana Tijoux (“Correlé, correlé, correlá / Correlé, they are going to kill you”), to the delicate ‘Luchín’, embroidered by Javiera Mena. Words for the “disappeared, shot, exiled”, by Tijoux, who shifted his gaze from him to Catalonia, “where bodies are also searched for and there are mass graves.”
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The emotional depth increased with Rusó Sala and a ‘Duerme negrito’ that led to ‘El arado’, with guitar and derivative trotona with charango and percussions. “Sweat makes furrows in me / I make furrows in the earth without stopping.” Verses rooted in the impassive everyday life of the countryside, worthy of a Atahualpa Yupanquiwho spoke with those from ‘A desalambrar’, by Daniel Viglietti, who assumed Silvia Tomas. “That the land is ours / it is yours and that / Of Pedro and María / Of Juan and José.” It was up to her to remember, in Catalan, Jara’s ‘Manifesto’: “I don’t sing for the sake of singing or for the sake of having bona veu.”“.
For the final section it was reserved for the contemporaries of ’73, those who suffered it firsthand: Inti-Illimani, the Chilean group that was on tour in Europe those days and remained exiled in Italy. In front, three historical ones, Horacio Salinas, Horacio Durán and José Seves, with their Andean instrumental and a selection of songs that embraced the remote ‘El lazo’ and the totemic ‘The people united will never be defeated‘. From there, to a shared ‘I remember you Amanda’, with her working-class memory and the most moving five-minute work break in popular music, calming the place after the grief and fury.