Post by Admin on Oct 13, 2024 7:26:09 GMT
We're looking back on a particularly brutal week in West Asia. The world is rocking a genocide where children's bodies are being picked up in plastic bags, and all they can do is talk about it. I follow the UN Security Council, which pretends to be a really sensitive and caring group of people, and there are one or two of those, but mostly what is visible is human pride and hubris. All they can say is that someone must do this or must do that. Sometimes it is a real action proposed, like a cease-fire, like forcibly stopping the human carnage. The Chinese envoy speaks with conviction that this must end, ceasefire now! the Russian envoy addresses the US directly saying that they cannot continue stopping this council from doing its work, and then the US vetos, five vetos now, because it wants this war. It needs this brutality on Palestinian and other peoples to continue. Brutality R Us. We genocide better than anyone else.
To survive this assault on the human soul, I tend to protest music. Victor Jara, a Chilean singer-songwriter with his guitar is where some peace is to be found. I feel peace listening to Manifiesto, a deep protest against the assault on workers and on humanity. Victor sings to his guitar, which becomes the depiction of the people. I don't believe there is anyone in Latin America who does not know these gentle chords and lyrics.
Victor was killed in a sports stadium in Chile when the democratic socialist president, Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup and a brutal military dictatorship was instituted under Pinochet. Allende was known as the first Marxist democratically elected president in Latin America.
Jara was arrested and taken into a stadium with 5,000 others, tortured, his hands were broken so that he could not play any longer, and dead, he was thrown on the street for the dogs to lick up his blood. A few years ago some Chilean soldiers were brought to justice and sentenced in a court in the US. This is bittersweet. They create a military dictatorship, arrange for the overthrow, kill the innocent, and then sentence their own killers.
The song, said to be the final one that Victor Jara wrote is well-known in the Latin Americas. My father-in-law, quite old then, came to visit us and we went to a restaurant where a 3-some of musicians were strolling around, taking requests and playing the hits of the day, noisy and loud as the Latins would be. I signaled them and asked for a ballad as the noisy environment was troubling the old man, whom I loved. I expected one of the popular Latin ballads, full of aching love gone wrong. They conferred, changed position somewhat and the first chords of Manifiesto rang out. The restaurant fell silent. Staff stood where they were, there was no noise, some eyes teared up and everyone knew and shared the meaning of this protest, so gentle, one can sing it to a baby as a lullaby. For moments we were united as a bunch of strangers in a restaurant. I guess the musicians had something to say to this gringa, but when my eyes teared up with the others, their playing became proud, sad and emotional. When they finished this song, all that I heard across this restaurant, was 'Victor', and 'Siempre' (always) from the staff who were deeply touched, and the tourists who saw something was happening that they did not quite understand but held the silence anyway.
Manifiesto
I don't sing for the love of singing,
or because I have a good voice.
I sing because my guitar
has both feeling and reason.
It has a heart of earth
and the wings of a dove,
it is like holy water,
blessing joy and grief.
My song has found a purpose
as Violeta* would say.
Hardworking guitar,
with a smell of spring.
My guitar is not for the rich
no, nothing like that.
My song is of the ladder
we are building to reach the stars.
For a song has meaning
when it beats in the veins
of a man who will die singing,
truthfully singing his song
My song is not for fleeting praise
nor to gain foreign fame,
it is for this narrow country
to the very depth of the earth.
There, where everything comes to rest
and where everything begins,
song which has been brave
song will be forever new.
---
*Violeta: reference to the Chilean ethnomusicologist and visual artist Violeta Parra - the founder of the New Chilean Song movement.
To survive this assault on the human soul, I tend to protest music. Victor Jara, a Chilean singer-songwriter with his guitar is where some peace is to be found. I feel peace listening to Manifiesto, a deep protest against the assault on workers and on humanity. Victor sings to his guitar, which becomes the depiction of the people. I don't believe there is anyone in Latin America who does not know these gentle chords and lyrics.
Victor was killed in a sports stadium in Chile when the democratic socialist president, Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup and a brutal military dictatorship was instituted under Pinochet. Allende was known as the first Marxist democratically elected president in Latin America.
Jara was arrested and taken into a stadium with 5,000 others, tortured, his hands were broken so that he could not play any longer, and dead, he was thrown on the street for the dogs to lick up his blood. A few years ago some Chilean soldiers were brought to justice and sentenced in a court in the US. This is bittersweet. They create a military dictatorship, arrange for the overthrow, kill the innocent, and then sentence their own killers.
The song, said to be the final one that Victor Jara wrote is well-known in the Latin Americas. My father-in-law, quite old then, came to visit us and we went to a restaurant where a 3-some of musicians were strolling around, taking requests and playing the hits of the day, noisy and loud as the Latins would be. I signaled them and asked for a ballad as the noisy environment was troubling the old man, whom I loved. I expected one of the popular Latin ballads, full of aching love gone wrong. They conferred, changed position somewhat and the first chords of Manifiesto rang out. The restaurant fell silent. Staff stood where they were, there was no noise, some eyes teared up and everyone knew and shared the meaning of this protest, so gentle, one can sing it to a baby as a lullaby. For moments we were united as a bunch of strangers in a restaurant. I guess the musicians had something to say to this gringa, but when my eyes teared up with the others, their playing became proud, sad and emotional. When they finished this song, all that I heard across this restaurant, was 'Victor', and 'Siempre' (always) from the staff who were deeply touched, and the tourists who saw something was happening that they did not quite understand but held the silence anyway.
Manifiesto
I don't sing for the love of singing,
or because I have a good voice.
I sing because my guitar
has both feeling and reason.
It has a heart of earth
and the wings of a dove,
it is like holy water,
blessing joy and grief.
My song has found a purpose
as Violeta* would say.
Hardworking guitar,
with a smell of spring.
My guitar is not for the rich
no, nothing like that.
My song is of the ladder
we are building to reach the stars.
For a song has meaning
when it beats in the veins
of a man who will die singing,
truthfully singing his song
My song is not for fleeting praise
nor to gain foreign fame,
it is for this narrow country
to the very depth of the earth.
There, where everything comes to rest
and where everything begins,
song which has been brave
song will be forever new.
---
*Violeta: reference to the Chilean ethnomusicologist and visual artist Violeta Parra - the founder of the New Chilean Song movement.
