Nueva canción
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.
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.
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.
[2] Though Nueva canción is often considered a Pan-Latino phenomenon, national manifestations were varied and reacted to local political and cultural contexts.
[6] In addition, Violeta's children Isabel and Ángel founded the cultural center Peña de los Parra,[7] 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.
[10] 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.
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.
[12] 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.
Increasing public recognition of the movement facilitated the gathering of its participants at events such as the Congreso de Artistas y Trabajadores (Conference of Artists and Workers) in 1983.
The Manifesto's introduction places the roots of Nuevo Cancionero in the rediscovery of folk music and indigenous traditions to the work of folklorists Atahualpa Yupanqui and Buenaventura Luna and the internal urban migration that brought rural Argentines to the capital of Buenos Aires.
Her success at the 1965 Cosquin Folklore Festival introduced Nuevo Cancionero to new levels of public exposure after Argentine folk powerhouse Jorge Cafrune singled her out on stage as a budding talent.
[25] Other notable Nuevo Cancionero artists of this time included Tito Francia, Víctor Heredia, and César Isella, who left the folk music group Los Fronterizos to pursue a solo career.
In 1969 he set the poetry of Armando Tejada Gomez to produce "Canción para todos", an anthem later designated by UNESCO the hymn of Latin America.
[27] Additional censorship, intimidation, and persecution forced many artists into exile where they had more freedom to publicize and criticize the events unfolding in Latin America.
Sosa, for example, participated in the first Amnesty International concert in London in 1979, and also performed in Israel, Canada, Colombia, and Brazil while continuing to record.
[28] After the fall of the dictatorship in 1983, Argentine artists returned and performed massive comeback concerts that regularly filled sports areas and public parks with tens of thousands of people.
[29] Influences from time spent in exile abroad were clear through sample of instruments like the harmonica, drum set, bass guitar, electric keyboard, brass ensembles, backup singers, string instruments (especially double bass and violin), and stylistic and harmonic influences from the soundscapes of classical, jazz, pop, rock, and punk.
It combines traditional folk music idioms with 'progressive' and often politicized lyrics that concentrate on socialism, injustice, sexism, colonialism, racism and similar 'serious' issues.
[33] Institutions like the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC (GES) while not directly working in nueva trova, provided valuable musical training to amateur Cuban artists.
[37] In 1959, after an article by Lluís Serrahima, titled "Ens calen cançons d’ara" ("We need songs for today"), was published in Germinàbit, more authors and singers were attracted to the movement.
[37] Miquel Porter, Josep Maria Espinàs and Remei Margarit founded the group Els Setze Jutges (The Sixteen Judges, in Catalan).
[34] New singers joined the group in the following years, until the number of sixteen (Setze), like Delfí Abella and Francesc Pi de la Serra.
[38] Other important participants in the movement included Guillem d'Efak and Núria Feliu, who received the Spanish Critics' Award in 1966, or other new members of Els Setze Jutges.
Apart from Raimon, other former members of Els Setze Jutges continued their careers successfully, including Guillermina Motta, Francesc Pi de la Serra, Maria del Mar Bonet, Lluís Llach and Joan Manuel Serrat.
