Musical Democratization, Sound Collectives, and Latin American Unity on the Path to Socialism in Chile, 1967-1973

Abstract

This dissertation demonstrates how a wide variety of musical and sound-making practices contributed to political thought and revolutionary struggle in Chile in the years leading up to and during Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government (1970-73). Over the course of this period, Chile embarked on an innovative experiment in democratic socialism, and, in turn, Chilean musicians radically reimagined music and musical culture. Drawing on extensive archival research and original interviews, I uncover transnational networks of exchange that have not yet been recognized in previous historical accounts of the Popular Unity period. I show that by tracing these transnational musical networks, a more globalized history of the Popular Unity period emerges, one that views Chile not in isolation, but rather as deeply interconnected with many actors and interests. First, I reveal efforts to democratize the performance culture of European classical music in Chile. I show how these efforts involved the signing of formal cultural exchange agreements between Chile, Cuba, and several Warsaw Pact countries, and thus the establishment of an East-South network for musical exchange. Drawing on the literary critic and theorist Ángel Rama’s notion of the Lettered City, I reveal how Chileans attempted to leverage European traditional musical repertoire and performance for power on the global stage. Next, I show how a regional, Latin American musical network between avant-garde composers and folk musicians coalesced around the ideology of Latin American revolutionary unity, as well as around solidarity with Allende’s Chile. To do so, I trace Chilean composers and musicians as they traveled beyond national borders to participate in the inaugural meetings of politically engaged, avant-garde music festivals held for the first time around Latin America. Furthermore, I reveal how the ideological underpinnings of this transnational network were strengthened and critiqued through the practice of musical commemoration. Lastly, I mobilize the theorist and activist Franz Fanon’s theory of revolutionary radio listening to show how everyday Chileans fabricated collectives and entered into a new form of political engagement through the use of sound, popular song, and radio in street protests and counterprotests. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that music and sound were sites of negotiation, where new social worlds were imagined. Furthermore, this dissertation proposes what call a “music history of possibilities,” an approach to musicology accounts not only for what occurred, but also for possible futures that have been arrested, unrealized, and lost.