Nueva canción

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Nueva Canción (Spanish for 'new song') is a movement in Latin American music that was developed first in the Southern Cone of South America, especially Chile, during the 1950s and 1960's, but also popularized shortly after in Central America. It combined traditional Latin American folk music idioms and some had popular rock music, with progressive and often politicized lyrics. It would gain great popularity throughout Latin America and sometimes called a precursor to rock en español. The nueva canción movement was a folk music revival characterized by social aims often connected to left-wing politics. Several Nueva canción musicians had to go into exile when their countries became right-wing military dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s. Prominent Nueva canción musicians faced different fortunes during military dictatoships, Victor Jara was killed by elements of the Chilean military, Mercedes Sosa from Argentina went into exile in Spain from were she wrote the song "Todo cambia", while Silvio Rodríguez from Cuba wrote "Canción urgente para Nicaragua" after the Sandisnista Revolution in 1979. Due to Nueva canción songs strong political messages some songs have contemporarily been used in political campaigns as such Violeta Parra's Gracias a la vida was used in the Orange Revolution. Nueva canción has became part of the Latin American and Iberian musical canon, but is no longer a contemporary genre, and has given place to other genres specially Rock en Español.

[edit] Characteristics

"La Nueva Canción" also known as the "New Song Movement" or "Trova" is a type of protest/social song. Its lyrics characteristically talk about poverty, empowerment, the Unidad Popular, imperialism, democracy, human rights, and religion. There are some hundreds of songs with influences from British and American pop rock that was popular with college youths.

Nueva canción largely draws upon Andean music, Música negra, Spanish music, Cuban music and other Latin American folklore. The most important source for nueva canción, however, is Chilean cueca, a rural song-form.

The '73 Chilean coup affected the genre's growth in Chile, the country where it was most popular, because the whole musical movement was forced to go underground. During the days of the coup, Victor Jara, a well known singer, songwriter and maybe the most popular figure of Nueva Canción, was tortured and killed by the new rightist military regime under General Augusto Pinochet. Other groups, such as Inti-Illimani and Quilapayún found safety outside the country. The military government under General Pinochet ruled until 1989 and went as far as to ban many traditional Andean instruments, in order to suppress the Nueva Canción movement. Following the deposition of Pinochet, the Estadio Chile in Santiago de Chile where Victor Jara was murdered bears his name.

Most songs feature the guitar, and often the quena, zampoña, charango or cajón. The lyrics are typically in Spanish, with some indigenous or local words mixed in.

While Chile has produced the largest number of Nueva Canción artists, its popularity has been great in almost all Spanish speaking Latin American countries, and it enjoyed some popularity in Spain during the 1970s, where it was innitially fueled fueled by the political opression of the Franquist regime.