something to take away
El Derecho de vivir en Paz
There's a history in Chilean music and there's a lot to say about Victor Jara, but Rolling Stone hits some of the key points.
The love and justice songs of Chilean folk singer Victor Jara were apparently so threatening to the military leaders who staged the nation's 1973 coup that they had to murder him. After beginning his career in the theater, Jara took up songwriting as his country endured the social convulsions of the Sixties. He supported the Socialist presidential candidate Salvador Allende, who was overthrown from office by the Chilean right wing and later died under mysterious circumstances. Taken prisoner with thousands of others in a stadium that now bears his name, Jara was tortured; after they broke his hands, guards mocked the singer, ordering him to play guitar. Defiant, he sang a political anthem that translates as "We Will Win." For his insubordination, Jara was machine-gunned to death, his body dumped on a street outside Santiago. A few months later, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs headlined a benefit in Jara's name in New York.
And a current example: Chico Trujillo
Hailing from the city of Villa Alemana, the Valparaiso region of central Chile, frontman Aldo Asenjo (aka "Macha") and guitarist Antonio Orellana - both members of rock-ska band The Floripondio at the time - set up a new music project that focused on mixing the traditional sounds of Latin America with the more contemporary music they were playing. Although the pair experimented with the rhythms of the bolero, salsa and rumba - it was the Chilean-style of cumbia - with its clip-clop momentum, dance-fuelled rhythms and modest instrumental melodies that the guys particularly loved.