The song remains the same

Posted Tuesday, November 20, 2007

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In these politically-charged times, it doesn't surprise that a new generation of musicians is showing signs of the socially-committed zeal that characterized the Latin American ''nueva canción (new song)'' movement that began in the 1960s. The activists-artists of nueva canción imagined improved living conditions in their countries, spoke for the economically marginalized, advocated for Latin American unity, and campaigned against unjust regimes and U.S. influence in Latin America.
Today, similar sentiments are expressed on the harder edges of Latin rock and hip-hop. But a new breed of Latin American singer-songwriters with something to say has also emerged, with music that incorporates updated versions of the traditional rhythms that the nueva canción artists once adopted as emblematic of Latin American pride. As in the United States, where songs of the Vietnam era can be regarded with current relevance, there's renewed interest in Latin America's former musical vanguard.
Earlier this month in Chile, rock bands Los Petinellis and Los Bunkers and Mexican singer Julieta Venegas were among the artists who performed at a concert celebrating the songs of legendary folksinger Victor Jara at the inauguration of Santiago's newly renamed Victor Jara Stadium. Thirty years after the coup in which President Salvador Allende was killed and his government overthrown, the stadium used by Pinochet's U.S.-backed military forces as a concentration camp was rechristened to honor Jara, who was detained with thousands of others there on September 11, 1973. The body of Jara, who had famously written, ''The guitar becomes an instrument of struggle, so that it can also shoot like a gun,'' was later found filled with 44 bullet holes; his hands, with which he had continued to write poetry even during his days in captivity, were crushed and mangled.
Here in Miami, Argentina's Mercedes Sosa, a pioneer of the nueva canción movement, will perform at the Jackie Gleason Theater this Thursday. Sosa, who is known for her immense throaty alto and equally formidable mother earth figure, features some songs by Jara in her vast repertoire, including his classic ''Te recuerdo Amanda,'' written for his daughter. On Sosa's 2003 Latin Grammy-winning live album, Acústico, she performs the disquieting ''Galopa Murrieta,'' a poem by Pablo Neruda, adapted by Jara and set to a clipped guitar rhythm evoking the ''assassinating pain'' of the Pinochet years.
Exiled by her own country's military regime in the late 1970s, Sosa has spent the last three decades strutting international stages, interpreting everything from the folkloric genres of Argentina to popular Latin American ballads to tango: anthems such as Victor Heredia's ''Una canción possible'' and Argentine folk rocker León Gieco's ''Solo le pido a dios (I Only Ask God For This)'' (the song echoes in Juanes' current hit, the equally earnest but more self-absorbed ''A dios le pido''). Idealistic lines like Gieco's famed ``I only ask God not to make me indifferent to war, it is a great monster that tramples on the poor innocence of the people'' have obvious resonance today.
Sosa is a Latin American icon, and her longevity has allowed her to update her political points of view along with her repertoire. Last week, queried by Miami media at a press conference, she said she had withdrawn her support for Fidel Castro following the execution of three Cuban men who attempted to hijack a boat earlier this year.
''It is the poetry that matters most of all,'' Sosa has said of her music. That poetry, and its meaning, endure.
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