The Militant Song Movement in Latin America Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina [Paperback]

When Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970, a banner proclaimed, 'There is no revolution without songs.'?And Latin America was rife with revolutions from the 1950s through the 1970s, especially Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Argentina, Colombia, and parts of Central America.?Readers living elsewhere and not caught up in these revolutions are unlikely to know the songs thus spawned, and since many of them were ephemeral and topical, few are heard today. Vila has collected nine chapters by specialists covering Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina. . . .Although some contributors have an intermediate degree in musicology, all specialize in nonmusical areas. Thus, the writers discuss militant songs in relation to complex political movements. Still, this volume is mainly about songs and their meanings, perhaps to paraphrase Mendelssohn, 'songs without music.'?The approach is factual and ethnographic, not obscured by postmodern theory, but also extremely detailed and thus challenging for nonspecialists. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.Pablo Vilas introduction to The Militant Song Movement in Latin America: Chile, Uruguay and Argentina succinctly defines the complexities of a movement whose narration differs across the three countries discussed in the book. . . .Drawing upon valuable historical resources, interviews and a vast repertoire of songs, the book is a valuable reference that highlights not only the role of the singers in this enduring movement, but also the political dimension that is allowed to preserve its emotive aspect. A movement that 'has outlived the historical conditions that engendered them,' as Nancy Morris states in her contribution, the relevance of the militant song, epitomised in particular by the Chilean experience of memory in relation to the epoch, needs a constant regeneration to avoid the pitfalls of the political periphery.Challenging the tendency to treat the musical practices surrounding the dictatorships l#¤