Tony Corden reviews Katia Chornik’s book about the relationship between music, politics, memory, and human rights.
‘There is no revolution without song’
This phrase is associated with Chilean President, Salvador Allende, who died on 11 September 1973, as Air Force jets fired on the presidential palace and tanks and troops mustered to execute the military coup and inaugurate a brutal dictatorship.
The phrase highlights the inseparable link between cultural and political change.
This was particularly exemplified through the La Nueva Canción Chilena, the New Chilean Song movement in which music, along with other forms of artistic expression , became part of the radical, optimistic political movement of Allende’s Chile.
The forces of repression recognised the transformative power of song and took aim at Victor Jara, one of the most emblematic artists of the time, torturing him, breaking his hands and then murdering him along with thousands of others.
Katia Chornik has written a uniquely fascinating book, exploring the musical elements and expressions of political prisoners during the dark days of the Pinochet dictatorship.
Through extensive research and interviews with survivors, she presents deeply moving testimonies which bear witness to the way music enabled people to navigate the terrible circumstances in which they found themselves.
One interviewee, Ana Maria Jimenez, tells of what she witnessed while a prisoner in Villa Grimaldi: one of the torture centres of the dictatorship.
On a cold night while the prisoners were gathered outside, an agent of the DINA secret police, knowing that she was a singer, ordered her to sing a song.
At first she refused as she felt that refusal was ‘a small act of rebellion’. However, she was persuaded by another prisoner and so sang ‘Zamba Para No Morir’, ‘Zamba so as not to die’.
Zamba to Prevent Dying
My voice will break the afternoon
Until yesterday’s echo
I’ll be remaining alone at the end
Dying of thirst, fed up of walking
But I continue growing in the Sun
Alive
Old was the time the flower
Fruitful the wood
Then the axe began to cut
See itself fall, only roll
But the tree will bloom again
Anew
As it burns in the sky the light of day
I leave
With my darkened skin I’ll leave
Hoarse upon screaming that I’ll return
Spread out in the air to sing
Forever
My reason asks for no mercy
It only serves to leave
Ritualistic death does not scare me
Only sleeping, seeing myself erased
A story will remember me
Alive
I see the fields, the fruit, the honey
And this desire to love
Oblivion cannot defeat me
Today as yesterday, it always arrives
In a child one may return
Anew
As it burns in the sky the light of day
I leave
With my darkened skin I’ll leave
Hoarse upon screaming that I’ll return
Spread out in the air to sing
Forever
Ana Maria Jimenez knew that another prisoner, Cedomil Lausic, who had been arrested in April 1975, was lying nearby in solitary confinement nearby following torture. She hoped that he would be able to hear her singing and that this would give him strength, knowing he was not alone.
She says that ‘all of my comrades had tears rolling down their faces, and I don’t know where I got the strength, but my voice began to lift up as I sang, like it was in flight … I was cold and afraid,’ she continued, ‘but I felt that I had performed a minimal act of resistance’.
Later she learned that her rendering of ‘Zamba Para No Morir’ was the last thing that Lausic had heard before he died.
Of course, as Chornik writes; ‘music and other art forms do not necessarily imply moral values’.
In Chapter 2 of the book she gives accounts of her interviews with Álvaro Corbalán; himself now a prisoner, serving a 100-year sentence for multiple murders. Corbalán was previously the commander of Cuartel Borgoño in Santiago, one of the most notorious torture centres of the dictatorship.
Strangely, Corbalán was himself a prolific songwriter, whom Chornik endeavours to understand through his music – a brave task, along with reflecting on the ethics and legality of recording and disseminating music composed by such a person.
This highlights the perennial dilemma: to what extent does the reprehensible behaviour of an artist negate the creative worth of their work. Where is the boundary?
There is also an account of a disastrous gig by Julio Iglesias in February 1975 in a Valparaiso prison. The singer’s failure to empathize with the political prisoners was met with a chorus of protest and he left without singing a single song.
The last chapter focuses on the digital project Cantos Cautivos, ‘captive songs’ which provides a fascinating archive of the musical testimonies of prisoners in the political incarceration centres.
There is a treasure trove of material here ranging from the lyrics and recordings of many inspiring songs to an unfinished melody written with burnt matchsticks by Jorge Peña Hen, who founded the first children’s symphony orchestra in Latin America. Peña was later shot by the Chilean Army platoon named the Caravan of Death.
There is a particularly moving account at the end of the book where a daughter writes about her feelings when she was able to listen to a recording of her father singing whilst imprisoned in Chacabuco camp, where he later died.
‘You can’t imagine how much this has shaken me. I am infinitely grateful for this work’.
All in all, this book provides an indispensable contribution to the recovery of memory in Chile and illustrates the power of sound and music.
We continue to celebrate the artistry and legacy of Victor Jara through the annual El Sueno Existe Festival in Machynlleth, Wales, now in its 21st year. The festival brings together music, poetry, dance, drama radical politics, environmentalism and spirituality, providing a signpost represented in the phrase ‘Another World Is Possible’.
Music and Political Imprisonment in Pinochet’s Chile by Katia Chornik,is published by Oxford University Press
Katia Chornik, is a Research Associate at the Centre of Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge. She grew up in the Chilean diaspora as her parents experienced political detention and exile under Pinochet. She is the author of Alejo Carpentier and the Musical Text (2015) and is the founder of the Cantos Cautivos digital archive.
Tony Corden is a retired psychiatric nurse, a musician and founder of the Victor Jara Festival in Wales, now El Sueño Existe.
Main Image: Valparaiso prison as it was in the 1970s
