COLLECTIVE MARKS CHILE’S HISTORIC MILESTONES
Democracy and justice are especially potent words when those concepts have been taken away, a fact with which the citizens of Chile are all too familiar.
Some of Chile’s most passionate music was forged in a fire of political and social injustice. Now members of Edmonton’s Chilean immigrant community and their friends are re-visiting those fires, creatively-speaking, for a special evening of Chilean song that spans musical styles and generations.
“We’re not trying to form a political movement or anything,” says Flavio Rojas, “but the truth is that the message behind these old songs seems increasingly important again in today’s world. Times are changing in the political world and there is concern about levels of injustice and discrimination, almost like we’re going back in time. It is important to examine history to avoid the same mistakes.”
Those “old songs” are two of the most significant long-form choral compositions in Latin American music history by Luis Advis: Canto Para Una Semilla (Song for a Seed, dedicated to the life of Violeta Parra), and Cantata Santa Maria de Iquique (Song for the Siege of Santa Maria de Iquique).
They will be performed Saturday by Colectivo 97, a unique local ensemble of 15 singers and players that was first formed to mark what would have been Violeta Parra’s 97th birthday in 2014. For this occasion, the group is even larger, uniting the varied talents and experience of nine Chilean-Canadians (one born here), two Peruvians, one Mexican and three Canadian friends, a mix of folk and classical musicians dedicated to airing these unique works.
The group includes name musicians who have pursued other solo or group projects such as Marco Claveria, Marco Vera, Jose Farina, Mario Allende and Marianela Adasme, along with classical players Diana Nutall (cello) and her brother Blyth Nutall (double bass). Classical guitar and Andean folk instruments, including the guitar-like charango and the tiny tiple, the quena wood flute, and the big bass drum or bombo leguero, will figure in the concert, along with the ensemble choir and lead singers.
Both the Canto and Cantata are sung in Spanish, with additional narration for about 45 minutes each, and they will be accompanied with projected English subtitles. As Rojas explains, it’s a rare opportunity to hear either work, let alone both in the same concert.
Colectivo 97’s Rojas is a graphic artist and artist-in-residence for Edmonton Public Schools who has used his connections in the dance and music community to serve as the informal logistical director of Colectivo 97 in his off hours. Like many members of Edmonton’s Chilean community, he came here as part of a small wave of immigrant-refugees in the late 1970s. They fled the violent oppression of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile, which had overthrown the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in a coup d’etat on Sept. 11, 1973. Several members of Colectivo 97 were imprisoned by the Pinochet regime before they went into self-exile.
“For Chileans in exile, whether we acknowledge it or not, our background feels like we carry a really heavy political weight on our shoulders. The changes in our history were violent and fatal for many and forced us to take some drastic steps because of what we believe or our parents believed. It’s something that you carry in your pores, that you can’t avoid. It doesn’t mean you feel a sadness, but as part of our passion for life here in Canada, it’s a reminder that we have a story to tell.”
That coup and Pinochet’s eventual resignation in 1990 was part of Chile’s long struggle toward democracy during the 20th century, a struggle that found popular heroes in figures like Violeta Parra (1917-67). Hugely significant to the movement for democracy, the singer-songwriter was a pioneer of the nuevo cancion, or new song movement, that took root in Latin America in the 1960s.
Composer Luis Advis (19352004) was a philosophy professor eventually recognized as one of the most important names in Chile’s music pantheon for his fusion of classical and folk traditions.
Advis composed the famous Cantata in 1969 for the male singers of the Chilean band Quilapayun, but for this project Colectivo chose to “bring a new touch” to the work, adapting it to include female voices. The classical protest song was inspired by an incident involving the massacre of a group of miners who were campaigning for labourers’ rights in the Chilean city of Iquique in 1907.
Advis’ Canto was originally written in the early 1970s for the famous Chilean folk group Inti-Illimani with guest singer Isabella Parra, daughter of Violeta Parra.
While political commentary is explicitly tied to both of the pieces, Rojas says the Canto takes on a more biographical character in adapting some of the personal writings of Violetta Parra.
“The alterations fit the rhythm of the cantata and the events of her life story from her childhood to her life as a responsible adult and the realization that her life is changing, through her experience of love, her involvement in the political movement and her death. It’s quite poetic in character.”
The concert will include a collection for victims of the recent forest fires in Chile.