ABSTRACT
While its title is general, this essay is focused on Chile, and to understand what is meant by nueva canción in Chile we must look at the movement from its beginnings. In July 1969 the Primer Festival de la Nueva Canción Chilena was held at the Catholic University in Santiago, organized by the office of Vice-Rector of Communications with Ricardo García, a key figure on the Chilean folk music scene both then and today. This was the first of three festivals held before the 1973 military coup. It brought together groups of musicians and soloists who represented a broad spectrum of the folk music that could be heard in Chile at the time, albeit mostly in Santiago. The victory of Víctor Jara’s Plegaria a un Labrador in the song competition helped legitimize the work of a new generation of musicians who were not only reacting against traditional ‘tourist’ folk, which sentimentalized and idealized rural life, but were also committed to social and political change through their music. It was probably consciously ironic, then, that the festival was dedicated to the Huasos Quincheros for their ‘thirty years’ labour in Chilean folklore’. Their inclusion gave broad credibility to the proceedings, and the smooth organization of the whole affair ensured media attention, giving prestige to competition winners and, by implication, to the nueva canción movement at the moment of its baptism.
