When a rural Ecuadorian, in the heart of the mountains, listens on his transistor radio to the Chilean Victor Jara singing his “Plegaria a un Labrador” (A farmers prayer) he is, although he may not realize it, listening to a piece of folklore. Such songs belong to a group of sometimes ephemeral phenomena which might be called “subjective folklore”, and which have not yet been given a place among the categories made by folklore specialists.
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Daniel Viglietti “Nueva Canción: Latin America’s song without frontiers” UNESCO Courier, April 1986, p.10Victor Jara
Q: You never heard about it again?
A: No. There was no Face-Space or Twitter at the time, so they would have had to put it in a ’zine. Now it’s just folklore. Except it’s not folklore because I’ve just confirmed it.Davey Havok
Victor Jara, assassinated by the Chilean dictatorship, Benjo Cruz fallen during his participation in the guerilla war of Teoponte, Jorge Salerno, executed during the Pando takeover, are living symbols of the impossibility our imperialist enemy has at silencing the collective voice of our Latin American people. “There are musicians who are only musicians” Haydée Santamaria once said, and she added that what was true about Victor, Jorge y Benjo was that “they were musicians that loved the people”. To these group of voices belongs Victor Jara, whom I personally knew, with whom I sang; we would dialogued and discussed each others’ songs, united in the objective of finding a new humanity.
Victor Jara
How’s this for a story? North Vietnam, 1972: Jane Fonda is in the midst of her visit when an N.V.A. officer gets an idea. He collects a group of American POWs from their septic dungeons, cleans them up, and has them mustered on parade to show his guest how well his embattled nation treats its prisoners.… Fonda moves down the line, greeting each man with encouragements like “Aren’t you ashamed you killed babies?” as she shakes his hand.… The POWs are beaten. Four die; one, Col. Larry Carrigan, survives—just barely, but it is he who tells about the incident.
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It never happened. It’s folklore, but folklore of a curiously evolved sort. There was a real Colonel Carrigan, and he was a POW in Vietnam. But he never met Jane Fonda, and he has no idea how the maddening tale attached itself to him.Jane Fonda
I have not played the cello in front of an audience since long years but I think I must do it this time. I am going to play a melody from the Catalonian folklore: The singing of the Birds. Birds, when in the sky, go singing: Peace, peace, peace. And this is a melody that Bach, Beethoven and all great people would have admired and loved. And, in addition, it springs up from the soul of my country: Catalonia.
Pablo Casals
Falsely conceived and rather clumsily executed crooked folklore and halfway opera. (Thomson's opinion of Porgy and Bess)
Virgil Thomson
Jara, Victor
Jardine, Quintin
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