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We Shall Not Be Moved / No Nos Moverán

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We Shall Not Be Moved / No Nos Moverán WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED / NO NOS MOVERÁN David Spener We Shall Not Be Moved / No nos moverán Biography of a Song of Struggle TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia t Rome t Tokyo TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2016 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education All rights reserved Published 2016 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Spener, David, 1961– Title: We shall not be moved/No nos moverán: biography of a song of struggle / David Spener. Other titles: No nos moverán Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016005353 | ISBN 9781439912973 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781439912980 (paper : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781439912997 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Protest songs—United States—History and criticism. | Protest songs—Spain—History and criticism. | We shall not be moved. Classification: LCC ML3780 .S68 2016 | DDC 782.42/1592—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016005353 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memory of Víctor Jara and Pete Seeger, who did not sing in vain Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 I HISTORY OF A SONG OF STRUGGLE 1 A Song, Socialism, and the 1973 Military Coup in Chile 17 2 “I Shall Not Be Moved” in the U.S. South: Blacks and Whites, Slavery and Spirituals 27 3 From Worship to Work: A Spiritual Is Adopted by the U.S. Labor Movement and the Left 39 4 From Union Song to Freedom Song: Civil Rights Activists Sing an Old Tune for a New Cause 62 5 From English in the U.S. South to Spanish in the U.S. Southwest: “We Shall Not Be Moved” Becomes “No nos moverán” 77 6 Across the Atlantic to Spain 90 viii \ Contents II MOVEMENTS AND MEANINGS 7 Social Movement: A Song’s Journey across Time and Space 113 8 Translation and Transcendence in the Travels of a Song 125 Conclusion: An Internationalist Culture of the Singing Left in the Twentieth Century 135 Coda 147 Appendix: Note on Methods and Sources 155 Notes 159 References 173 Index 191 Acknowledgments any people and institutions have contributed to the publication of this book. The travel, research, and writing involved would Mnot have been possible without the generous financial assistance I received from Trinity University. In 2011, this assistance took the form of a paid leave and the funding of a trip to study the role of song in social justice and human rights movements in Chile in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In 2014, the Carlos and Malú Álvarez Fund and the Martha, David, and Bagby Lennox Foundation provided grants to Trinity University’s Mexico, the Americas, and Spain (MAS) pro- gram that enabled the organization of a multievent symposium and performance series titled Social Justice, Human Rights, and Song on the World Historical Stage: Chile Canta al Mundo, which brought together scholars, activists, and musicians to discuss the legacy of the nueva canción movement throughout the Americas (see www.trinity .edu/chile-sings). The presentations, performances, and discussions that took place during this series, which was hosted by Trinity Uni- versity and the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center in San Antonio, Texas, contributed significantly to my understanding of how “I Shall Not Be Moved” became a social movement anthem in Spanish as well as English. x \ Acknowledgments As I conducted my research for the book, the staff of a number of other institutions provided invaluable assistance, including Graciela Sánchez y la buena gente of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center; archivists at the Fundación Salvador Allende in Santiago, Chile, and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives in New York; and librar- ians in the Special Collections of the University of Texas–Arlington Library and the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville. In addition, I owe a debt of gratitude to the individuals whose names I list here in alphabetical order: Edison Argandoña, Susana Asensio, Antonia Castañeda, Leroy Chatfield, Marcelo Coulon, Irma De León, Juan Pablo González, Joaquina Labajo, Ricardo Loyola, Arturo Madrid, Maria McWilliams, Aaron Navarro, Lluis Panyella, Xavier Pimentel, Anthony Seeger, and Zaragosa Vargas. Some of the people in this list are friends of long standing, while others are those with whom I made acquaintance in the course of conducting my research. I also thank Sara Cohen and Micah Kleit of Temple Uni- versity Press, whose interest in and support of this project have never flagged. In addition, the comments I received on earlier drafts of the manuscript from anonymous reviewers recruited by Temple Univer- sity Press were invaluable to me in revising and polishing the text. Last, but far from least, I give thanks to my wife, Marsha Krass- ner, who has always given me the freedom to pursue my interests and passions, wherever they might lead. Without her support, under- standing, and critical eye as a reader, this book would not be in your hands today. WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED / NO NOS MOVERÁN Introduction his is the improbable story of a simple song and its long and complicated journey across oceans and continents. And I am an T improbable person to be telling it, so let me explain how I came to write this book. I grew up in a white, middle-class home in a white, middle-class neighborhood in the middle of the United States a bit after the middle of the twentieth century. My parents loved music but weren’t musicians, and, like most middle-class families in the middle of the country at that time, we didn’t own a lot of records or listen to a lot of recorded music in the house when I was young. There was, however, one record we owned that captured my imagination and that I listened to on the turntable again and again. It was by the folk music trio Peter, Paul, and Mary. My favorite song on the record was “If I Had a Hammer,” whose driving rhythm in their arrangement made me want to learn to play the guitar. When I was eight years old, my father retrieved for me an old “Stella” guitar that he had given away to a friend after giving up on learning to play it himself. My parents signed me up for group guitar lessons at the local YMCA, and Note: The contents of this book are accompanied by a website containing numerous photographs, videos, and other supplementary materials that can be accessed at http://gotu.us/nonosmoveran. 2 \ Introduction “If I Had a Hammer” was one of the first songs I learned how to play. Another was “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” from that same Peter, Paul, and Mary album. Both were written by Pete Seeger, a man whose name appears repeatedly in the pages of this book. By the time I was a teenager, I’d become a pretty good guitar player and also had discovered my singing voice. I’d begun listening to Seeger’s records, memorizing the chords and lyrics to his songs and imitating his distinctive vocal style. In the mid-1970s, I finally had the opportunity to see Seeger perform in person, in a concert with Arlo Guthrie, Woody’s son, at the Mississippi River Festival in Edwardsville, Illinois. Although I don’t remember all the details of that concert, I do remember Seeger strumming his twelve-string guitar while reciting a bilingual version of a poem written by a South American songwriter that I had never heard of. The songwriter’s name was Víctor Jara, he was from Chile, and he had been murdered by soldiers of his own country’s government. Seeger’s somber recita- tion of the poem did not make much of an impression on me at the time; there were other songs that I was already familiar with and had appreciated much more. A few years later, I was living in Madison, Wisconsin. I had start- ed college there but had dropped out. Dreaming of rising to fame as the next Bob Dylan, I played my guitar and sang around town at any bar or coffeehouse that would have me. I had gotten interested in the left-wing revolutions that were going on in Central America. These armed struggles were inspiring a great deal of activism in solidarity with the revolutionaries, centered around the University of Wiscon- sin campus where I had been a student. I found myself living in a communal house with other amateur musicians, students, and some- time political activists. One night, several of my housemates attended a concert by Inti-Illimani (IN-tee-yee-MAHN-ee),1 a Chilean band that had come through Madison on tour. I didn’t go to the concert, since I didn’t speak Spanish, had never heard of the band, and was short on cash. A housemate who did go to the concert bought a copy of one of the band’s LPs, titled Hacia la libertad (Toward Liberty), on the Monitor Records label. She lent me the record and insisted that I listen to it. I’d never heard music quite like this before, full of pow- erful masculine voices accompanied by bamboo flutes, pan pipes, calf-skin drums, and a variety of stringed guitar and mandolin-like Introduction / 3 instruments whose names I did not know. The vinyl disc inside the album cover came sheathed in an envelope on which were printed the titles of the songs, the names of their authors, and the lyrics in both English and Spanish.
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