THE MUSIC OF BLOOD AND VIOLENCE
Voorhees, Mark
The music of blood and violence The Chileans are rescuing it from the punks Mark Voorhees The lead singer jerks his head back. A scowling face, often veiled by a thick mop of black hair, glares...
...Rock musical scores became Broadway hits, like Jesus Christ Superstar...
...But despite the best efforts of journalists to sell punk, the public is not buying it...
...Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (' !970 Cotillion Music, inc., and Broken Arrow Music) But the music tempered as the comMark Voorhees is an editorial intern at The Progressive...
...During the 1970-1973 reign of the Unidad Popular government, "factories had their singing groups, miners organized and wrote plays about their lives, and neighborhoods came together in pride to see and hear expression of their own culture," as Col-man McCarthy was to write later in The Washington Post...
...In Punk, the blood and violence is no more than vented boredom exposed raw...
...Like its ancestor, punk is loud, often discordant, and brutal...
...It's called Chilean New Song...
...A snappy disco beat and shallow lyrics became the criteria for success...
...They sing of decapitations, sedations, and lobotomies...
...They were out of the country in 1973 when a military junta took over the country...
...Quilapayun was acclaimed in a recent tour of twenty U.S...
...New Song, by contrast, evokes other images: "With one single stroke [the executioner] severed the fingers of the left hand, and with another stroke, the fingers of Victor's right hand...
...Now, New Song has been banned from the country, its practitioners exiled or murdered by the military government...
...Not surprisingly, the media have found this mixture of physical and social apathy to their liking...
...A scowling face, often veiled by a thick mop of black hair, glares at the audience...
...He steadied himself for a moment and then, lifting his bleeding hands, began to sing, with an eager voice, and everybody sang with him...
...But instead of offering pointless violence as an alternative, New Song reaches into native traditions for a music that kindles emotional strength...
...The frenzied audience, some with safety pins through their noses, begs for more...
...He clutches his tipped mike stand," in the words of Rolling Stone, the rock magazine, "with abject desperation, weaving around the unsteady axis like a drunk looking for a keyhole...
...The Ramones are also noteworthy in still another respect: They are possibly the most popular punk rock band in the United States...
...Last April 23, clothed in suit and tie, they appeared on the cover of Forbes magazine...
...And so is the music...
...But they sing a different kind of social protest — a message of apathy and disillusionment...
...In New Song, it is real...
...The sight was too much for the military...
...Their music reflects the turbulence in their past...
...The social conditions that preceded Salvador Allende's election to the presidency of Chile in 1970 also provided fertile soil for the growth of New Song...
...Then the guns were aimed at the bleachers — killing 600 more prisoners on that day of horror...
...Rock and roll became a packaged music to be hyped and sold...
...Now, the raw power of rock is back in the form of punk...
...Top Forty tunes...
...The musicians spoke to the landless peasants flocking to the cities to find work, to workers attempting to unionize, to angry students — the coalition that Allende brought together...
...cities...
...It brought back the ancient vocal styles of the Andes Indians and such indigenous instruments as the charango, a small ten-string guitar made from an armadillo shell...
...A volley, and Victor's body began to fall forward as if he were bowing long and slowly in reverence to his comrades...
...Elvis Costello's punk classic, This Year's Model, has captured only a tiny fraction of the popular music market, as has Saturday Night Fever, the disco bestseller...
...We describe it [the state of exile of New Song] as a body with two arms...
...Audiences applauded the bold combination of politics and Andes folk music that hits home to Americans dissatisfied with bland, uncontroversial music...
...A quick scan of the titles of punk songs shows their social awareness: Fm Against It, Go Mental, Now Let's Sniff Some Glue, and Gimme, Gimme Shock Treatment by the Ramones, or Don't Worry About the Government and No Compassion, by another popular punk rock group, the Talking Heads...
...Screaming and barking at the audience, punk musicians perform like street gangs in a brawl...
...But the message continues to reach the people of Chile through international radio broadcasts and cassette tapes smuggled into the country...
...The Bee Gees, an older, moderately popular rock band, topped all record charts after they became disco converts and recorded Saturday Night Fever...
...The exotic music provided a piquant contrast with imported North American popular music that had been pushed on the country...
...The street-tough image of rock changed...
...The Ramones have trouble booking concerts...
...It swept the countryside and cities...
...The fingers fell on the wooden floor," says Miquel Cabezas, an eyewitness to the torture and execution of the leader of New Song and national hero, Victor Jara, before a stadium of 6,000 political prisoners on the day of the Chilean coup...
...Bruce Springsteen — a rock and roll idol of the 1970s — appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek, while other popular rock bands hit the campaign trail for Jimmy Carter...
...Punk rock conforms with their notion of the message of today's youth...
...Joey Ramone and the members of his band are former juvenile delinquents...
...I wanna be sedated," he cries...
...Quilapayun, the most popular Chilean New Song group, served as international ambassadors for the Allende government...
...While punk albums continue to command publicity, they remain untouched in music stores...
...When rock and roll burst forth twenty years ago, the public was outraged by the screaming and loudness — a sharp contrast with the popular music of the day...
...Like Punk Rock, which rejects the banal vernacular music of the day, New Song is a reaction to humdrum music...
...With that animalistic vigor came an equally powerful social message: Tin soldiers and Nixon coming We're finally on our own, This summer I hear the drumming Four dead in Ohio...
...As adolescents they sniffed glue, vandalized property, and had run-ins with the law...
...Meanwhile, some Americans are responding to a different music that confronts social reality...
...After his election, Allende's move'New Song reaches into native traditions' ment marched to the strains of New Song...
...As the rock bands of a generation ago broke the blandness of the 1950s, the punks of the late 1970s are defying the disco mentality of dancing and feeling good...
...New Song quickly proved it was more than a match for the tinny banality of U.S...
...motion of the 1960s waned...
...In this country, with most of the citizens living in unprecedented comfort," writes McCarthy in The Post, "we do not ask our singers to remind us of poverty, injustice, or oppression of the spirit, preferring instead the Frank Sinatras and Barbra Streisands [and the Ramones, and the Bee Gees, to amend the list] whose anemic music helps listeners to forget reality, not confront it...
...Instead of forgetting or rejecting the society from which it springs, New Song embraces and protests it...
...One arm is inside Chile and the other is outside," says exiled Rodolfo Parada, a member of Quilapayun...
...Allende acclaimed the New Song surge as a vital political force: He gave praise "to those who sang, to those who gave us their joy, and their spirit to the struggle...
...They claw at their guitars and stab their drums with vengeance...
...their lives were spared while Allende himself and thousands of other Chileans died...
...New Song was developed in Latin America during the 1960s by musicians using native Indian instruments and complex vocal harmonies...
...Even the instruments have been outlawed...
Vol. 43 • August 1979 • No. 8
