Music, Memory, and the Re-Constitution of Place: the Life History of an Ecuadorian Musician in Diaspora Francisco Lara

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF MUSIC

Music, Memory, and the Re-constitution of Place: The Life History of an Ecuadorian Musician in Diaspora

FRANCISCO LARA

A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music in Musicology

Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2005

The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Francisco Lara defended on April 25th, 2005.

______Dale A. Olsen Professor Directing Thesis

______Frank Gunderson Committee Member

______Michael Uzendoski Committee Member

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.

For my Father.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank the members of my committee, Dale A. Olsen, Frank Gunderson, and Michael Uzendoski for their guidance, patience, and support. In addition, I am indebted to several friends and colleagues for their continual encouragement, advice, and technical help, especially Trevor and Sara Harvey, Rebecca and Scott Macleod, Amanda Marks, Sarah Arthur, and Leon Garcia. To my family and parents in particular, I am forever grateful for their unfaltering love and understanding. Without the help of those mentioned above, the completion of this thesis would not have been possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... vi Abstract ...... vii

Preface ...... 1

Chapter 1: Introduction...... 4

Reflection One ...... 19

Chapter 2: Leo: A Life History...... 22

Reflection Two ...... 48

Chapter 3: Bridges of Cultural Understanding: Music and Memory...... 51

Reflection Three ...... 64

Chapter 4: Memory, Identity and Place ...... 66

Epilogue ...... 73

APPENDICES ...... 75

A Leo and Kathy Lara, Artistic Resume...... 76

B Informed Consent ...... 79

REFERENCES ...... 81

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 86

LIST OF FIGURES

1. Hermeneutical Arc ...... 13

2. “La Plegaria a un Labrador” by Victor Jara (Giurar 2004) ...... 27

3. “Que Dira El Santo Padre” by Violeta Parra (1976)...... 31

4. “El Palomo” from the cantata “La Vigilia” by Oswaldo Torres (Lara 1988).58

5. “Karas-Karas,” traditional san juan, province of Cañar, Ecuador (text provided by Leo Lara) ...... 61

ABSTRACT

Building on literature dealing with memory and hermeneutics as they relate to music and musical experience, this thesis explores the role of music and memory in the negotiation of place within the context of displacement through the life history of Eulogio Leonidas Lara (Leo), an Ecuadorian immigrant musician currently residing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Active as a musician, social activist and educator alongside his spouse, Kathy, since the early 1970s, Leo maintains a strong connection to his homeland through music and his use thereof despite his estrangement. Through his work as a musician, he not only bridges his life and experiences within Ecuador and the United States, but with the greater community as well. In so doing, he manages to fashion a unique sense of place that, while fundamentally rooted in his experiences as a musician within Ecuador, traverses both worlds. In the end, I argue that it is through music and memory, as they inform perception and understanding, that Leo negotiates his sense of being and place as an individual living in diaspora.

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PREFACE

“Mamá, where are you playing tonight?” I call down from upstairs. “The Minneapolis Urban League, . . . why, do you want to come?! We’re leaving in five minutes.” With only momentary hesitation I respond, “Ah, sure. Just give me a moment.” “Yippee!” she says, clapping with pleasure. “It’s good to have you home, Pacho.” It’s good to be home, I think to myself, sighing. I quickly switch into fieldwork mode, mentally preparing as I gather the necessary equipment: camcorder, tripod and videotapes – check; digital camera – check; Sony Minidisk recorder and microphone – check. “Pacho, nos vamos!” yells my mother from below. “Ok, ya vengo,” I yell back, padding myself for anything I might be missing – a pen and paper. Basic, I think to myself shaking my head. I race out the door just as my father is pulling out of the driveway. It is a chill Thursday evening, December 9, 2004 in Minneapolis, Minnesota – my home. I arrived only the day before from Tallahassee, Florida where I spent the previous two years working towards a masters degree in ethnomusicology. My interest in music is without question a direct result of my upbringing. Music was and continues to be an integral part of our home. Both my father, Leo, and my mother, Kathy, are musicians and educators who interpret the traditional and folkloric music of Latin America, specifically the Andes region (i.e., Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina). The walls of our home seemed to reverberate constantly with the sound of my father’s powerful voice, coupled in harmony with my mother’s own as they would sing countless songs by such poets and songwriters as Violeta Parra, Daniel Viglietti, and Victor Jara. The charango, guitarra, and bombo driving the rhythms of a cueca, san juanito, or a huayno, danced in counterpoint with the innumerable Bach fugues and Beethoven sonatas I studiously learned and played as a child.

1 It is little wonder, then, that at the age of 19, I chose to attend the school of music at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where I eventually earned a BM in Western music theory. It was during my undergraduate studies, after taking an introductory course in non-Western musics, that I began to take a renewed interest in the music of my parents. My curiosity piqued, I took advantage of several courses being offered at the time dealing with the music and cultures of Latin America. Not only did the text and professor speak to me, I found, but of me, or at least of my own experience with these musics and traditions. It was then that I began to realize the significance of the cultural and musical heritage that my parents continually strive to maintain and pass on. It was then that I began a journey that I now realize to be ultimately one of self- discovery. The irony of that quest does not escape me for the more distance my studies and life happenings take me from my home and my family, the closer I seem to get. And while I suspected that my studies would lead me to a better understanding of my family and myself with respect to the music and our cultural roots, I never expected to turn the scholarly lens inward. Though biography (also known as life history in anthropology) as a valid research method is extensively employed in anthropology, sociology, folklore, history and historical musicology, it remains vastly neglected in ethnomusicology. And yet within the last ten years there has been an evident growth of life histories within the discipline as indicated in a January 2001 issue of World of Music dedicated entirely to biography: a recognition of the value and potential of life history methods in addressing the complex relationship between the individual and society and the significance of music therein. In accordance with this recent shift re-evaluating the respective place of the individual within ethnomusicology, this thesis presents a life history of Eulogio Leonidas Lara, known variously to many throughout the course of his life as an Ecuadorian, an immigrant, a musician, an educator, and a social activist. To me, however, he is known simply as my father. To place one’s own family, let alone one’s own life, under the critical scrutiny of academic scholarship is, as Ruth Behar poignantly expresses in The Vulnerable Observer (1996), to make oneself vulnerable. Only recently and with a certain amount of

2 reservation has anthropology considered the value of self-reflexivity in ethnography—of sincere introspection and reflection by the ethnographer on the interpersonal relationships which constitute the very essence of field work. With the advent of interpretive approaches, the emergence of such genres as the life history and life story, and the increasing number of “native” scholars, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, and other academics in the social sciences are re-evaluating the very notion of objectivity and the status of the ethnographer (see Behar 1996, 25-31). As Behar notes, “the lines between participant and observer, friend and stranger, aboriginal and alien are no longer so easily drawn” (Ibid., 28). As a result, “identification, rather than difference,” insists Behar (Ibid.), is now “the key defining image of anthropological theory and practice.” It is, as Behar reveals, an identification not only of the ethnographer with the interlocutors, but also one of the reader with the ethnographer who bridges the spatial and temporal divide that exists between them and the subject. And yet, as Behar notes, there remains a great deal of skepticism and reluctance in the academic community in general to even consider what such personal narratives can contribute to the discipline. To write oneself into an ethnography in a meaningful way, however, is not an easy task. A “pandora’s box,” as Behar likens it, the task of writing vulnerably is a precarious one. The responsibility of the ethnographer as an interpreter and guide, as a “cultural broker” of sorts, is one that demands a certain amount of vulnerability, or transparency as alluded to by Clifford Geertz in the Interpretation of Cultures (1973). But Behar warns that to write vulnerably should not be an end in itself, but rather a means to an end. She emphasizes that “the exposure of the self who is also a spectator has to take us somewhere we couldn’t otherwise get to . . . it has to move us beyond that eclipse [of unnecessary or decorative exposure] into inertia” (Ibid., 14). Furthermore she contends that “efforts at self-revelation flop not because the personal voice has been used, but because it has been poorly used, leaving unscrutinized the connection, intellectual and emotional, between the observer and the observed” (Ibid., 13, 14). By no means a small challenge, Behar’s proposition suggests a more humane approach towards the disciplines of anthropology and ethnomusicology. And it is in this vein that I endeavor to interpret and represent my father’s life history and the significance of music and memory therein.

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

Overview

Currently residing in Minneapolis, Leo1 is active in the community as a musician and educator alongside his spouse (my mother), Kathy Lara, interpreting the traditional and folkloric music of Latin America.2 Together they appear regularly at folk festivals, public schools, college campuses, concert halls, and political demonstrations throughout Minnesota and the neighboring states of Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas. Using his music as a form of social and political commentary, cultural advocacy, and education, Leo effectively creates or enables “bridges of cultural understanding” that allow him to both maintain and express a sense of his Ecuadorian identity while forming unique social ties with the community at large. Emigrating from Ecuador in 1978 at the age of 24, Leo left during a period in Latin American history that was marked by great political and social unrest. It was, however, a period that saw the emergence of a generation of poets and singer/songwriters who collectively merged political ideology with folklore and music as a part of Nueva Canción, or the New Song movement. Inspired by the movement’s message and infused with a sense of social consciousness as a result of the contemporaneous socio-economic and socio-political climate in Ecuador and Latin America in general, he participated as a

1 In an effort to avoid confusion with respect to the surname Lara, I will refer to Leo and Kathy (my parents) on a first name basis throughout the thesis with the exception of the self-reflexive narratives found between each chapter. 2 Folkloric music in this sense refers to the performance of music that stems from the study of folk music; see chapter 2. 4 musician and activist, both forming and performing with various groups in solidarity with rural campesinos (peasants) and obreros (factory workers) in their struggle against economic and social injustice. These profound experiences left an indelible mark on the young and impressionable man who soon found himself in the United States with an American wife and a twelve-month-old child. As one of a handful of Latinos residing in the Twin Cities during the early 1980s, Leo soon found fertile ground for the expression of his music and New Song ideology in connection with local Latin American interest groups and other organizations and individuals working towards social justice. He worked with poets and artists, politicians and activists, and others involved with everything from the American Indian Movement (AIM) and labor unions to apartheid and Women Against Military Madness (WAMM). Through this, Leo was able to grow and develop as a musician and social activist, allowing him to essentially continue the work he started in Ecuador. The trajectory of Leo’s life from his formative years in Ecuador to his subsequent immigration to the United States reveals the central role music plays in the structuring and interpretation of such experiences, providing a sense of continuity through his music and work as an educator and social activist. Leo’s story presents one particular strategy for coping with the experience of immigration through music. Through a detailed discussion and analysis of Leo’s life history plus my own self- reflexive essays, this thesis explores music making in the context of displacement from the perspective of one immigrant musician and the significance of music within his overall lived experiences. Building on literature dealing with memory as well as hermeneutics, I argue that it is through music and memory, as informed by his past experiences working within the New Song movement, that Leo negotiates his sense of being and place as an individual living in diaspora.

Survey of Literature

The topic of this thesis originally emerged from a much broader consideration of Ecuadorian musicians in diaspora, specifically the indigenous merchants and musicians from the community of Otavalo in the northern province of Imbabura. Discussed in great

detail by anthropologists Lynn Meisch (2002) and David Kyle (2000), the Otavalans are truly transnational in that their entrepreneurial activities take them annually to fairs and markets worldwide, yet ultimately see them back to Otavalo generally within a matter of months. As a result, the intercultural linkages created by this resourceful community set them apart from more traditional long-term immigrants, Ecuadorian or otherwise, who may not have frequent contact with or access to their natal communities. The community of Otavalo provides a unique perspective on the process of globalization – the dynamic flow of individuals, goods, capitol, technology, and information (Appadurai 1991) – and its impact on indigenous cultures, which makes it particularly attractive to anthropologists, sociologists, and ethnomusicologists alike. My initial interest in Andean music resonates with the above concerns and more specifically with the notion of identity, authenticity, tradition, and modernity as reflected in the music and lives of these itinerant Ecuadorian musicians engaged with the process of globalization. Yet over the course of my research and involvement with the ever growing community of Otavalans in the Twin Cities, I became increasingly aware that, though certainly necessary, the increased focus on transnational migrants tends to neglect yet another important perspective, that of the long-term immigrant musician. This thesis, in part, seeks to fill that gap. Following is a review of the more salient perspectives informing my approach to and understanding of the topic as a whole. A more thorough consideration of their theoretical and methodological implications are addressed in the appropriate sections. The experience of relocation, whether forced or not, is one that typically throws into question the very notion of self, of who we are as individuals and where we fit within the greater social milieu. As such, a discussion of music and migration necessarily implies a discussion of diaspora in relation to the individual. Though the use of the word “diaspora” in ethnomusicology and academia in general has greatly expanded from its original context as noted by Mark Slobin (2003),3 it is still useful in situating the individual in relation to a broader community of migrants with a shared place of origin or ethnic identity, and in recognizing the relationship of this community, albeit complicated, to not only the homeland, but the dominant culture as

3 See Slobin (2003) for an overview of the application of the term “diaspora” in ethnomusicology. 6

well. Slobin’s consideration of the dynamics of this interaction – between the dominant culture (superculture) and various subcultures, which include the cross-cutting intercultures that develop as a result of diasporic and affinity networks – underscores the complexity of music making in relation to memory and place within the context of diaspora (1993). Furthermore, Slobin states that the various –cultures (super, inter, and sub) “be looked at from an individual perspective” (Slobin 1993, 69) in order to fully understand their relative impact on music making, and it is in this spirit that the present thesis attempts to address the issue of music making in diaspora. Interpretive approaches to life histories in anthropology have made me particularly sensitive to the dynamics of construction and representation with regards to the above concepts, as well as to the pervasive role of memory in that process. Long employed in anthropology as an ethnographic approach in understanding “the cultural construction of self” (Blackman 1991, 58), life histories since the 1970s reflect an ongoing concern within anthropology and the social sciences in general with the subjective nature of ethnographic representation and the role of the ethnographer in its construction (Swan 2003, 16-22). The role of life histories shifted during this time from that of objective data used to illustrate certain aspects of a particular society (a “life focused” approach that presumes a reality external to the narrative) to that of subjective text (a “story focused” approach in which the narrative itself constitutes reality) to be interpreted as an end in itself (Swan 2003, 8-22; Peacock and Holland 1993, 368-370)4. James L. Peacock and Dorothy C. Holland (1993, 368) prefer the term “life story” over “life history” as a recognition of its narrative aspect. Indeed, the very etymology of the word biography, which stems from the Greek prefix bio- (life) and suffix graphein (writing or representation), supports such an understanding (Merriam-Webster, 1998). That the act of ethnography includes several layers of interpretation, not the least of which involves the researcher whose final rendition in the form of an ethnography is arguably the most significant, is by now well acknowledged since Clifford Geertz (1973) first argued for closer attention to ethnographic detail (Gilbert Ryle’s “thick description”) in capturing the significance of interpretive gestures in a given society. Implicit in

4 For a thorough overview of life histories in anthropology, see Watson/Watson-Franke (1985), and Scott Swan (2003: 8-22) 7

Geertz’ argument is the need for a more reflexive approach recognizing the guiding assumptions and biases of the individual researcher that ultimately bear upon the final analysis and interpretation. The need for reflexivity in life history approaches is clearly articulated by James Freeman in Untouchable: An Indian Life History (1979, 393): “failure to assess or at least recognize the observer’s or editor’s role leads to an image of a life history that is distorted and incomplete, since each editor, though not consciously is necessarily influenced by his own perspectives.” As Swan (2001, 18) notes, reflexivity is necessarily implicated in life history approaches that seek meaning within the narrative structure itself through hermeneutic and phenomenological interpretive frameworks (philosophical disciplines concerned with meaning and experience respectively).5 More recently, however, Peacock and Holland argue for a “processual” approach that seeks to situate the narrative concerns of interpretive approaches within a broader socio-cultural context that takes into account various social and psychological processes (Peacock and Holland 1993). Peacock and Holland’s perspective is informed by the understanding that “the telling of life stories, whether to others or self alone, is treated as an important, shaping event in social and psychological processes, yet the life stories themselves are considered to be developed in, and the outcomes of, the course of these and other life events” (Ibid., 371). Such an understanding, they argue, may serve to reconcile the existing gap between individual life stories and society at large, providing a better understanding of the role of the individual in the various social and psychological processes essential to life (Ibid., 377). Reflecting this perspective within ethnomusicology is Rice’s May it Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music (1994). Through a self-reflexive ethnography centered around two Bulgarian individuals, Kostadin and Todora Varimezova, Rice explores meaning within the experience of music making through a hermeneutic framework sensitive to both time and place. Most significant is Rice’s understanding that musical experience, as “the history of the individual’s encounter with the world of musical symbols in which he finds himself” (Ibid., 6), is ultimately situated within a larger socio-cultural and socio-historical context. Highly subjective, musical experience,

5 See Watson/Watson-Franke (1985: 31-44) for a more thorough explanation of hermeneutics and phenomenology. 8

then, must be addressed from the perspective of the individual. In doing so, one must take into account the totality of an individual’s life history, including the social, cultural, and historical dimensions that bear upon an individual’s perception and interpretation of those experiences. This understanding is clearly reflected in Rice’s subsequent article “Time, Place, and Metaphor in Musical Experience and Ethnography” (2003) noted above. As a “self-contained fiction” (Titon 1980, 266), life stories, constructed by the self and interpreted by an interlocutor (if not an autobiography), reflect what historian R. G. Collingwood (1946) refers to as the work of the “historical imagination,” or the notion that history itself is a product of recollection – a subjective act dependent on time and place. “Life storytelling is a fiction,” remarks Jeff Todd Titon, “a making, an ordered past imposed by a present personality upon a disordered life” (Titon 1980, 290). This realization leads Titon (Ibid., 278) to distinguish story from history as something made versus something discovered, or as imaginative creation versus knowledge. Yet for the purposes of this thesis it may be helpful to understand historical knowledge as rooted in and perpetuated through the collaborative efforts of both individual and collective memory as explicated by sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1992). Reconciling the position of the individual relative to the various groups to which he/she conforms, Halbwachs notes that “individual memory is . . . a part or an aspect of group memory, since each impression and each fact, even if it apparently concerns a particular person exclusively, leaves a lasting memory only to the extent that one has thought it over – to the extent that it is connected with the thoughts that come to us from the social milieu” (Ibid., 53). In this sense, history is meaningful only insofar as it relates to an individual’s particular frame of reference, which is provided in part by the greater society (a notion explored in greater detail in the following section). Knowledge and its meaning, then, is not some external reality to be discovered, but is ultimately situated within the self in the totality of lived experience, or more precisely within the juncture between individual and collective memory. That memory plays a crucial role in shaping and understanding past and present experiences, ultimately informing our sense of self and place, underscores the significance of life histories in understanding and situating individual experience within a

larger social and historical context. From an ethnomusicological perspective, it also calls into question the role of music in that process. Of the relatively few studies in ethnomusicological literature dealing with music and memory, Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s Let Jasmine Rain Down (1998) and Dale A. Olsen’s The Chrysanthemum and the Song: Music, Memory, and Identity in the South American Japanese Diaspora (2004) are of most relevance. Shelemay traces the development of the pizmon (a paraliturgical hymn juxtaposing Hebrew text with Middle Eastern Arabic music) along with the migration of Assyrian Jews over the last century, illuminating the ways in which music is implicated in the work of memory. Situated between several overlapping and intersecting domains of memory, pizmon “brings the past into the present through both its content and the act of performance, while also serving as a device through which long forgotten aspects of the past and information unconsciously carried can be evoked, accessed, and remembered” (Shelemay 1998, 6). Thus, music serves as a conduit for both individual and collective memory, which occupy the same expressive space through the act of performance (Ibid. 10), transcending both time and place, and ultimately allowing for the maintenance and negotiation of identity (Ibid. 213). In a similar fashion, Olsen (2004) considers the role of music and the overall experience of music making (including listening and dancing) in the continuance and development of Japanese ethnic identity among the Nikkei, or people of Japanese heritage, in South America. Both studies illuminate the significance of music and performance as vehicles for memory. Implicit in the above studies is the notion that identity, as informed by music and memory, is intimately associated with place. Indeed, the very act of migration throws into relief the significance of place in orienting an individual’s understanding of self. This much is evident if only through the pervasive use of such words as displacement and disjuncture in discussing the experience of migration. As Martin Stokes (1994, 3-5) notes in Ethnicity Identity, and Music, music plays a significant role in the mediation of that gap, as a means of relocating, or reembedding oneself. As an event that “evokes and organizes collective memories and present experiences of place” (Ibid., 3), music and performance effectively collapse the space between past and present while ultimately informing both ones sense of self as well as of place, as suggested by the literature

referenced above. Implicit in this statement is a sense of agency and the notion that identity and place, as subjective concepts, are malleable; that they can expand with new environments and new experiences, reinventing and revising themselves as in the case of the Jewish Assyrian community in Brooklyn, New York and the Nikkei in South America. Enabled through music and performance, it is the work of memory that allows an individual to negotiate a sense of self and place, finding new meaning in new contexts. Following is a consideration of the complexities of this process.

Memory and Hermeneutics

A consideration of memory as understood by historian Carl Becker (1932) and Maurice Halbwachs (1992), in conjunction with Rice (1994) and David Harnish’s (2001) understanding and application of hermeneutics to musical experience, provides a means of better understanding Leo’s musical life history. As a point of departure, an examination of the very notion of history and its relation to knowledge is necessary. Grounding knowledge in memory, Becker notes that every individual has the capacity for historical knowledge in the sense that history is “the memory of things said and done” (1932, 222). He develops his argument through a consideration of the essential role memory plays in the daily operations of life, illustrating how the “specious present” or the “telescoping of successive events into a single instance” gives one the illusion of an ever present moment, expandable and highly subjective as an “unstable pattern of thought” constantly responding to the perceptions and current aims of the individual that are in part created by those perceptions (Ibid. 226). In this way, Becker implicates the past as the work of memory, not only in the constitution of the present but in the anticipation of future events as well (Ibid. 227). Thus past, present, and future are intertwined, a significant point further strengthened by Halbwachs’ seminal work towards a sociology of knowledge, On Collective Memory (1992). Halbwachs provides an even more dynamic understanding of the complex relationship between knowledge/memory, and present/past through a consideration of individual and collective memory as they relate to perception and recollection, or the

formation and interpretation of history. Concerned with the nature of human knowledge and understanding, Halbwachs suggests an inherent structural framework to memory that is fundamentally social in its construction and perpetuation as a dialogue between individual and collective memory (1992, 53, 167-169). Inextricably linked, individual and collective memory collaborate through the dual act of perception and recollection. Halbwachs likens this collaboration to that between an image and its idea as understood in philosophy as being simultaneously the object contained and its container. Halbwachs empasizes the following:

. . . Ideas and images [read collective memory and individual memory, or recollection and perception] do not designate two elements, one social and the other individual, of our states of consciousness, but rather two points of view from which society can simultaneously consider the same objects that it situates in the totality of its notions or in its life and history (Ibid., 175).

In this way, both individual and collective memory work to produce a particular frame of reference specific to both time and place. Thus, in accordance with Becker above, perception and recollection as informed by the frameworks established through individual and collective memory are mutually implicated in the process of constructing and interpreting not only history, but the present as well. This fusion of past and present in the process of recollection is inherently recognized in our use of the prefix “re-” as Kevin A. Yelvington notes in his article “History, Memory and Identity” (2002, 235). Yelvington argues that “memory is an activity in the present, the production of symbolizations in relation to the social and cultural world. It is a part of a process of the self situating itself, of interpreting bodily states and emotions” (Ibid., 239), of interpreting present experiences of self and place with reference to the frameworks of memory. Yet, as Alon Confino remarks in an article titled “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method” (1997), memory alone, as a theoretical approach, lacks sufficient explanatory value beyond the tacit recognition of these orienting structural frameworks and of the complex relationship between individual and collective memory. In other words, memory, as a theoretical concept, only takes an individual up to

12 a certain point, to the threshold of new encounters. Yet in order to understand exactly how these structural frameworks of memory allow an individual to mitigate new experiences, especially those of disjuncture and rupture brought on by migration, it is necessary to consider the process by which knowledge and understanding itself is acquired, or how one comes to understand and make sense of that which is new and foreign. Implied by Halbwachs in his discussion of perception and recollection is a process that Rice (building on literature in philosophical and phenomenological hermeneutics) considers fundamental to individual understanding: appropriation as a reflexive act of introspection or distanciation, through which understanding, rooted in experience, is ultimately achieved (Rice 1994, 3, 4; Halbwachs 1992, 167-169). When encountering new experiences, an individual undergoes a process characterized as a move from pre- understanding through distanciation which then leads to appropriation or new understanding, as illustrated in figure 1 (Rice 1994, 6).

Figure 1: Hermeneutical Arc.

Contrary to the negative connotation generally implied by the term, appropriation in this sense becomes the means by which the foreign is made familiar (Ibid., 5). This transformative process essentially allows for the continued negotiation of present reality. In this way music, as a form of ritual activity, serves as a means of understanding and shaping the physical and metaphysical world experienced by man through its symbolic

appropriation and expression.6 This entire process must be understood, however, as occurring within the context of memory, both individual and social, which provides the structural frameworks, or the orienting symbols, whereby understanding is enabled (Ibid., 3). As mentioned above, these frameworks are not rigid structures, but flexible “horizons” (Gadamer 1986, 273) that expand with new experiences and their subsequent understanding. Knowledge, then, as implied in Becker’s notion of historical knowledge as “the memory of things said and done,” becomes the sum of one’s experiences and their subsequent understanding over time. It is in this sense that Harnish (2001) examines the life history of I Made Lebah, a prominent Balinese musician, from the perspective of successive hermeneutical arcs within the overall context of Lebah’s life. As Harnish notes with regards to Lebah, “Music became a way to relive his effective history, to re- experience the familiar. He had appropriated many styles of music and found a ‘home’ to revisit in each” (Ibid., 36, my emphasis). This is a profound statement that reveals a sense of agency in the interpretation and understanding of musical experience with respect to memory. Thus, not only is the past reconstructed from the perspective of the present, but conversely present experiences are actively engaged and shaped by the past through ever expanding frameworks of memory, making familiar that which was once foreign. It is at this level, at the juncture between memory and understanding, that this thesis seeks to examine how music is implicated in the constitution or re-constitution of the present, or rather, the ways in which music as process allows an individual like Leo to fashion a familiar sense of place, a type of home away from home, through the negotiation of new and foreign experiences with reference to memory.

6 Several illustrative ethnographies exist in ethnomusicological and anthropological literature including: Steven Feld’s “Sound Structure as Social Structure” (1992), Judith Becker’s “Time and Tune in Java” (1992), Thomas Turino’s “The Coherence of Social Style and Musical Creation Among the Aymara in Southern Peru” (1989), and anthropologist David Guss’s To Weave and Sing: Art, Symbol, and Narrative in the South American Rain Forest (1989), to name a few. 14

Methodology

Bruno Nettl notes the conspicuous absence of the individual in ethnomusicological literature despite the interpersonal nature of fieldwork, speculating whether this tendency is a result of an overriding concern among ethnomusicologists with music as a cultural phenomenon, or with “musics with which large groups of people identify themselves” in an effort to validate the inclusion of these musics in the existing musicological canon (1983, 275). Though exceptions do exist dealing primarily with Native American individuals such as Charlotte Frisbie and David McAllester’s Blessingway Singer (1978), Judith Vander’s Songprints: The Musical Experience of Five Shoshone Women (1988), and Nettl’s “Biography of a Blackfoot Singer” (1968), the fact remains that the individual more often than not is relegated to the margins, playing a supportive role at best in ethnography. Yet as alluded to above, a re-evaluation of the individual’s place within ethnomusicological fieldwork and ethnography is currently underway. In large part a result of recent shifts in ethnomusicology and the social sciences in general regarding issues of representation and the very notion of culture, ethnomusicologists such as Simon Ottenberg (1997), Jonathan P. J. Stock (1996a and 1996b), Helen Rees (2001), Joseph S. C. Lam (2001), Regula Burckhardt Qureshi (2001),Viet Erlmann (1991), Michael Bakan (1999), Virginia Danielson (1997), Amelia Maciszewski (2001), Theodore Levin (1996), Rice (1994), and Harnish (2001), to name a few, are placing the individual at the center of musical ethnography and are employing a variety of theoretical perspectives ranging from hermeneutics to gender relations (Stock 2001). And though, as Stock notes, a greater reliance on historical data distinguishes biography from more conventional experiential models of ethnographic research, the shift is not so much one of fieldwork methodology as it is of literary focus (Ibid., 6, 7). As such, the research design adopted for the purposes of this thesis includes the use of interviews, observation, and participation as well as more formal research concerning the socio-historical context surrounding the emergence of the New Song movement and Liberation Theology in Latin America. Three major interviews conducted with both Leo and Kathy serve as the primary source material upon which this thesis is

built. Other materials include previously recorded performances as well as promotional and other archival documents provided by Leo and Kathy. Additional insight is provided through both formal and casual observation of and participation in performances, workshops, residencies, rehearsals, and other such activities pertinent to Leo’s work as a musician. Unlike the interviews, the above observations encompass a much broader time-frame. As a method of organizing the biographical information derived from the sources above, I apply anthropologist David G. Mandelbaum’s (1973) concepts of dimensions, turnings, and adaptations. By dimensions, Mandelbaum means those aspects of a person’s life that are “made up of experiences that stem from a similar base and are linked in their effects on the person’s subsequent actions” (Ibid., 180), a notion concurrent with that of Halbwachs’ social frameworks of memory. In turn, the major transitions in an individual’s life and his/her subsequent responses to them constitute the turnings and adaptations (Ibid., 181) portion of Mandelbaum’s model. In this sense, adaptation essentially refers to the hermeneutic process that enables one to appropriately respond and ultimately adapt to new situations. In this particular case, the primary turning is Leo’s immigration to the United States, a pivotal event guiding the organization, analysis, and interpretation of the recollections and observations gathered during fieldwork. Further turnings are derived through an analysis of Leo’s life history sensitive to the dynamics of its construction. Thus, Leo’s life history, presented in Chapter Two, focuses on those aspects of his life most salient to his formation as a musician and individual in general as revealed through the interview process. In an effort to situate Leo’s life history within a greater socio- historical context as suggested by Peacock and Holland (1993), Chapter Two necessarily includes a discussion of Nueva Canción and Liberation Theology. The disjuncture created by Leo’s immigration to the United States and his subsequent attempt to bridge that gap through music will be the primary focus of the subsequent chapters. Chapter Three examines Leo and Kathy’s use of music within the United States since 1978, focusing on two specific songs within the context of performance while illuminating the role of memory in the process of bridging dichotomies such as

past/present, individual/collective, and self/other. It is in part this process, I argue that allows for the immediate negotiation of place. Together, Chapters Two and Three provide a composite of Leo’s life and work as a musician both within Ecuador and the United States to the present day. Respectively, they reveal two distinct yet interrelated processes involving music and memory: one occurring contemporaneously through the act of performance, the other through the course of one’s life. In discussing both, I believe we can reach a deeper appreciation of how music works both in and through Leo’s life and how, together, they inform his sense of place. Lastly, Chapter Four presents an analysis of Leo’s life history sensitive to its construction, bringing together the material and concepts discussed in the previous chapters while considering their implication with respect to the formation and negotiation of place within the context of displacement. Following Ruth Behar’s (1996) understanding of anthropology and the nature of anthropological fieldwork as a self-reflexive process wherein an understanding of the ‘other’ ultimately leads towards an understanding of the ‘self,’ as well as vice-versa, I explore my own journey through the “anthropologist’s tunnel,”7 examining the connection, both intellectual and emotional as Behar suggests, between myself and my father in three self-reflexive essays interspersed between each chapter. Just as my father’s narration of his own life history, my own interpretation and representation thereof reflect the interpretive process represented by the hermeneutical arc. As such, my reflection upon my engagement with my father and with the notion of memory during the course of writing this thesis led me to a new understanding of him – of who he is today and how his life experiences have helped shape him. In addition, they have also led me to a new understanding of myself and my own life experiences in relation to my father and his experiences as well as to the theoretical concept of memory more generally. And while the focus of this thesis is necessarily maintained on my father, I recognize that it is only in understanding myself and the relative impact of my own experiences on my formation and perception of the world that I can begin to understand

7 Behar uses this phrase as a metaphor for the experience of fieldwork and the self-reflexive journey upon which it takes the ethnographer. 17

my father and his experiences. Thus, I believe it is not only relevant, but necessary to include these personal reflections as they inform my interpretation and understanding of my father’s life history. In sharing glimpses of my own self-reflexive journey while working on this thesis, I hope to not only provide an additional level of depth to this study, but to engage the reader in their own process of self discovery. For in the end, as Behar (1996, 16) observes through her own experience with self-reflexive writing, “when readers take the voyage through anthropology’s tunnel it is themselves they must be able to see in the observer who is serving as their guide.” In connecting with my own experiences in understanding my father’s life history, the reader may come away with a better understanding not only of my father and the significance of music within his life, but ultimately of themselves with respect to the issues explored in this thesis. Thus the first two reflections briefly touch on my relationship with my father as well as on the notion of memory in general, while the third reflection focuses primarily on my growing awareness of the significance of memory within my own life. As a process of discovery, the reflections are neither intended to theorize nor present definite answers to the issues and questions raised within. Rather, they are intended to engage the reader in a dialogue through which new meanings and understandings may be generated.

REFLECTION ONE

Grabbing a charango (a ten-stringed lute) and a basket full of chal’chas (a rattle made of goat or llama hooves) out of the van, I quickly make my way into the Urban League and hand the instruments to my father who is setting up a table at the front of the room where they will be performing. I survey the space briefly as I make yet another trip. A buffet table full of what appear to be home cooked dishes of various ethnic influences from tamales to spring rolls line one end of the hall. A group of tables along the other end surround a small wooden dance floor, behind which my father places the table. Already, some are seated with their food as the buffet line continues to grow with the arrival of more people. A set of djembes and other percussive instruments that appear to be of African origin are tucked away in a corner of the room. “Looks like we’re on first,” says my mother as we walk past a room where a few members of a local Swedish dance troupe are practicing their steps. Setting up the video camera and mini-disc recorder, I take mental note of the diverse mixture of people filing into the dining hall. As varied as the culinary dishes on their plates, the ethnicities represented reflect the large influx of immigrants to Minnesota from various parts of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia since the early 1990s. I briefly ponder the significance of the changing demographics and their relative impact on the cultural scene in the Twin Cities: the emergence of restaurants and specialty markets catering to every possible imaginable ethnic group from the Vietnamese and Mhung to the Lebanese and Somali; the numerous night clubs featuring salsa, cumbia, merengue, bachata, and even tejano music; the development of a vibrant live music scene with musicians playing everything from Bulgarian and Afro- pop, to Brazilian and Andean music; the demand for support services like cultural centers and places of worship addressing the cultural and spiritual needs of the growing

19 immigrant communities; the sound of different languages spoken within earshot while riding the bus downtown – the list goes on. With a certain amount of pride, I note that the Twin Cities is in many ways an international metropolis. Yet, as a I look over towards my father, now tying his long dredlocked hair behind his face as he picks up a pair of chal’chas, I realize the situation was considerably different when he first arrived in Minnesota over twenty years ago. As one of only a handful of Latin American immigrants in the Twin Cities at the time, there were few established support networks save those geared towards the migrant Mexican and Chicano families concentrated in the West side of Saint Paul. Given the situation, the historically Polish neighborhood of Columbia Heights just north of Minneapolis seems an unlikely but no less accommodating place to settle for a recent Latin American immigrant like my father still struggling with the English language. And yet this decision, like those of many other immigrants no doubt, was one necessitated by the particular situation in which my parents found themselves. It is there, on the 38th block of Main Street, that my parents decided to build their new life and create a home for their family, one distanced physically from the rugged peaks and narrow valleys of highland Ecuador, yet intimately linked to its many cultures and traditions through music. Contained within those walls I have come to recognize and cherish as home is an aura of that land my father left behind. Strewn about the house, a bandolin (a type of mandolin), kena (an end-blown notched flute made of bamboo or wood), rondador (a single-row panpipe) or bocina (a trumpet-like instrument made of a ram or cow’s horn) conjures the sound of feet pounding earth in time with a san juan during Inti Raimi. Likewise, the conical drums and marimba hanging in the living room suggest the dense layers and complex rhythmic patterns typical of the African derived music of the coastal province of Esmeraldas. A haunting painting by renowned Ecuadorian artist Guayasimin depicts the city of Quito nestled beneath the angular edges of Pichincha, while sashes, felt hats, and fachalinas (a cloth traditionally worn by women in Otavalo either wrapped around the body or the head) of brilliant colors and intricately woven patterns recall the bustling markets of Otavalo. In many respects, Ecuador is very much present within our home, its memory entangled with our present lives.

20 And though I know the path was not always easy or clearly defined, my father persevered with the help of my mother, building a place for themselves within the community through their music while, in many respects, laying the groundwork for many future Latin American immigrants and musicians settling in the Twin Cities. Now, standing here watching my parents prepare for what will be one of three performances this weekend alone, I cannot help but marvel at their achievements as musicians, educators, and political activists engaged with the people and issues of this community. When asked if they ever foresaw where the road they embarked upon might eventually lead, my parents shake their heads in bewilderment. Without question, my father misses the home and family that nurtured his youth. And while distance may physically alienate my father from his natal community and family, it cannot erase their memory. Firmly rooted, they cling fast, growing thick and entangling as they spread like vines. At times, I can sense them working through my father, manifested in his charismatic presence as well as in the passionate tone of his voice raised in song. And while they serve to ground him, they also illuminate the path before him. Standing tall with the bombo slung around his shoulder, my father looks very much at ease among those gathered at the Minneapolis Urban League. I cannot help but wonder whether or not my father considers the Twin Cities home, now having spent the majority of his adult life in the United States. The thought is cut short as the MC approaches the podium, signaling the start of the program. By now well familiar with my parents’ routine, I press record and survey the room, observing the reaction of the audience as my father begins a familiar huayno, “en el pueblito bailando estan, los sikuris del altiplano . . .”

CHAPTER TWO LEO: A Life History

Part One: Ecuador (Engendered Dimensions)

Cuajara: Origins

Of African and indigenous descent, Leo was born December 5, 1952 in Cuajara, a former hacienda (plantation) located within the Chota valley region of the northern Ecuadorian province of Imbabura. Known for its production of sugar cane, the Chota valley is populated primarily by Ecuadorians of African descent initially brought to harvest the fields for the manufacture of raspadura (sugar cane resin) and aguardiente (sugar cane liquor). In fact, the very name of the hacienda, Cuajara, reflects the region’s strong identification with its historical and agricultural roots in its reference to the processing of sugar cane into raspadura. While slavery was ultimately abolished in Ecuador in 1851, remnants of the abhorred system remained, institutionalized by the mestizo ruling class and internalized by the Afro and indigenous Ecuadorians in a manner similar to that described by anthropologist Lynn Meisch (2001) in relation to the indentured servitude of indigenous highland Ecuadorians in the Otavalo valley. As a result, upward economic and social mobility for the people of the Chota valley during the last half of the twentieth-century meant a physical relocation from their rural communities to the urban center of Quito. Such was the case for Leo and much of his family. At the age of six and half, Leo boarded a train for the first time in his life and

22 headed for Quito, leaving behind the confines of the valley that up to that point had been his home. Reflecting on his childhood, Leo confesses that he remembers little of Cuajara, as he left at such a young age. “Every day was the same,” he says, “upon waking we saw mountains in front of us, mountains to our back, to our left, and to the right. In other words, it was like an enclave that, for me, did not make much sense. For [me], it was everything. It was the center of the world.” Where do the people go, he wondered. For Leo, Cuajara and everything contained within the valley was reality. And yet there were hints of the world beyond. “Seldom, a car would pass,” he adds, “[usually] a colorful one that came raising dust on the highway and of course all of the children came down to see this phenomenon, this colorful car.” Other memories, however, revolve around the cultivation and processing of the sugar cane, the central task of the families living on the hacienda. Various tasks were required on the plantation, notes Leo. While each family was provided a chosa (a modest home constructed of bamboo, mud, and straw) and a plot of land to farm by the plantation owner, the workers earned as little as two sucres (the former national currency) per week – a system designed to maintain a certain level of dependence on the part of the workers often reinforced by brute force. Such was the case when Leo’s mother, María, left Cuajara in search of work, placing Leo and his younger brother in the care of extended family. Within a year, María succeeded in securing a position with a wealthy family as a muchacha (maid or servant) working “puertas adentro,” meaning she was contracted to clean, cook, wash clothes, and perform other such domestic chores required by the employer on a 24 hour basis. While the stipend was still rather meager (roughly 120 sucres per month), the advantage of such employment meant that room and board were provided not only for the muchacha, but with luck, for her children as well. Thus it was María who promptly made arrangements for her children to join her in Quito. Leo vividly recalls the day his mother returned: I was in school, first grade, when an aunt approaches me and says “your mother is here, she came to get you.” Of course, it was an emotional situation for me, after not seeing my mother for so long. And, of course, she took me.

23 Today, the Pan American highway runs past Cuajara, its smooth asphalt surface cutting and winding through the endless and impressive chain of mountains and valleys that are the Andes, directly linking the small, relatively isolated hacienda with the capital city. The significance of this connection does not escape me as I reflect on previous conversations with my family in Ecuador. “Solo los viejos queden” (only the elderly remain), they say. In listening to them reminisce, it is clear that, though they believe their decision to leave Cuajara was in fact the right one, Cuajara remains an important part of their lives, if only in memory. For a people whose life on the hacienda revolved around and depended upon the family, maintaining contact with those either too old or too young to leave is not only important, but necessary. It is simultaneously a reaffirmation of both long standing family ties and of their ethnic heritage, of their identity as Afro-Ecuadorians of the Chota valley. For Leo, to return to Cuajara is more than to return to his place of birth, it is to return to the roots of his people – to find himself anew.

Quito: Formative Years

As the site of Leo’s initial encounter with the world, Cuajara forms one, albeit major aspect of his identity. Yet, it is in Quito that Leo develops those dimensions that will guide his formation as an individual and musician throughout the remainder of his life. It is here, during his formative years, that Leo finds himself as a musician committed to social justice through his encounter and appropriation of the music and ideology of Nueva Canción (New Song) and Liberation Theology. Raised across from La Universidad Central del Ecuador in Quito (Central University of Ecuador), Leo vividly recalls the various protests and student confrontations that frequently occurred on its premises: A series of student activities occurred at the university. There was a flux of students. It was a large university. At the same time, there were confrontations between the police and the students, depending on the situation for which the students were protesting. It was common for the transportation fares to be raised. The students took to the streets to protest because they knew the common people couldn’t afford to pay [the higher prices]. In addition, raising the fares also raised the cost of those products necessary for daily survival, rice, sugar, etc. And of

24 course the economic conditions only worsened because the government couldn’t regulate [the prices]. They didn’t even have a plan for regulating these changes. Throughout all this, I believe there developed a personal level of consciousness, for my part, and a critical questioning of why these things happened. It wasn’t easy living in front of the University, you see, with eyes full of tears every time tear gas was thrown and [hearing the sound of the] bullets that passed over the rooftops. Often, the Universities looked desolate because they were closed by government decree for one, two, three years. Only military personnel standing on one corner or another were visible among the desolate buildings. This whole situation of growing up in front of the University had an effect on my consciousness, awakening it further.i

This heightened consciousness motivated Leo to pursue more constructive means of becoming involved with social issues. It was at that time, during the early 1970s, that he first encountered the music and message of a growing movement with origins in Chile – Nueva Canción – and befriended a group of young university students who would become the founders of one of Ecuador’s leading Nueva Canción ensembles, Jatari.

Nueva Canción and Liberation Theology: Encounter

The movement now generally referred to as Nueva Canción, or New Song, emerged in Latin America amidst the social and political unrest of the 1960s and 1970s, gaining momentum and strength throughout the continent in tandem with yet another movement that was sweeping through the Catholic church, Liberation Theology. As a response to the dire social, economic, and political conditions many Latin American countries faced at the time, both Nueva Canción and Liberation Theology effectively invigorated the working class and other disenfranchised sectors of the population, supporting and promoting social change with their message of solidarity, hope, nationalism, resistance, and even revolution. Their impact is felt even today as the music and message of Nueva Canción finds new expression not only in Latin America, but abroad as well. While Nueva Canción manifested itself in various ways and under different names throughout Latin America, reflecting the particular social and political situation within which it developed, many scholars and musicians involved with the movement agree that its roots lie in the revival of folk traditions initiated in Chile and Argentina in

25 the late 1950s (Nancy Morris 1986, 117; John M. Schechter 1999, 425-428). In response to what many perceived as a cultural invasion by the United States and Europe whose music dominated the airwaves, a renewed interest in folk traditions arose, spurring artists initially in the Southern Cone to collect and disseminate the songs, rhythms, dances, and other forms of expressive culture indigenous to their respective countries (Morris 1986, 118; Schechter 1999, 432). Not unlike the folk revival movement within the United States, the work of these early song collectors was to document and preserve what they recognized as a valuable and integral aspect of their national heritage and identity. Among them, Violeta Parra and Victor Jara were seminal in the development of La Nueva Canción Chilena (the new Chilean song, which became Canto Nuevo post 1973) and to the movement as a whole. Inspired by and drawing upon the folk traditions they collected and absorbed, both Jara and Parra laid the foundation for New Song artists throughout Latin America for decades to follow. Within Chile, the movement coalesced during the mid 1960s within the context of “la carpa de La Reina” (The Tent of La Reina, a suburb of Santiago) a cultural center established by Violeta outside of Santiago, Chile in 1964, and La Peña de los Parra (The Peña of the Parras), a coffee house also established in Santiago by Violeta’s two eldest children, Isabel and Angel Parra. Musicians and artists gathered in these venues, discussing and learning about the various folk traditions found throughout Chile. They also shared with one another their own compositions, which drew upon those folk elements and often incorporated lyrics with a strong social content. Through the use of indigenous instruments, such as the charango (a ten-stringed lute of European influence), kena (an end-blown, notched flute), and bombo (a double-headed drum), as well as through their choice of genre and dress, New Song artists rooted their political message in the voice of the common man. It was with the first festival of New Song in Santiago, Chile (Primer Festival de La Nueva Canción Chilena), held in 1969 under the auspices of La Universidad Catolica, that this emergent form of popular music came to be known as Nueva Canción (Morris 1986, 119, 120; Schechter 1999, 429). Victor Jara’s “La Plegaria a un Labrador” (Fig. 2), which tied for first place as the best composition of the festival, reflects the

26 commitment of Nueva Canción musicians to social and political issues as well as their identification with the proletariat.

“La Plegaria a un Labrador” “Prayer to a Laboror”

Levantate y mira la montaña Stand up and look at the mountain De donde viene el viento el sol y el agua Source of the wind, the sun, the water Tú que manejas el curso de los rios You who change the course of rivers, Tú que sembraste el vuelo de tu alma Who with the seed sows the flight of your soul.

Levantate y mírate las manos Stand up and look at your hands, Para crecer estrechala a tu hermano Take your brother’s hand so you can grow. Juntos iremos unidos en la sangre We’ll go together, united in blood, Hoy es el tiempo que puede ser mañana The future can begin today.

Líbranos de aquel que nos domina en la Deliver us from the master who keeps us in misery. miseria The kingdom of justice and equality come. Tráenos tu reino de justicia e igualdad Blow, like the wind blows, the wild flower of the mountain Sopla como el viento la flor de la quebrada pass, Limpia como el fuego el cañón de mi fusil Clean the barrel of my gun like fire.

Hágase por fin tu voluntad aquí en la tierra Thy will be done, at last, on earth. Danos tu fuerza y tu valor al combatir Give us the strength and the courage to struggle. Sopla como el viento la flor de la quebrada Blow, like the wind blows, the wild flower of the mountain Limpia como el fuego el cañón de mi fusil pass. Clean the barrel of my gun like fire. Levantate y mírate las manos Para crecer estréchala a tu hermano Stand up and look at your hands. Juntos iremos unidos en la sangre Take your brother’s hand so you can grow. Ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte We’ll go together united in blood. Amen Now and in the hour of our death. Amen

Figure 2: “La Plegaria a un Labrador” by Victor Jara (Guirar 2004).

Between the years of 1970 and 1973, La Nueva Canción Chilena flourished as musicians and ensembles such as Victor Jara, Inti Illimani, and Quilapayún further defined their commitment to social and political issues with their support of Salvador Allende and the socialist party, Unidad Popular (UP). Songs such as “Venceremos” written by Claudio Iturra and Sergio Ortega as well as “El Pueblo, Unido, Jamás Será Vencido” by Sergio Ortega (the former sung by Inti Illimani and the latter by Quilapayún) became a rallying cry, reflecting the strong sense of optimism and

27 nationalism among the supporters of the UP (Morris 1986, 121-122; Schechter 431). An entire album, Canto Al Programa, produced by Inti Illimani along with Sergio Ortega, was dedicated entirely to the dissemination of the UP agenda (Morris 1986, 121). As John Schechter notes, every major event during Allende’s short lived presidency (1970 to 1973) was recorded in song (Schechter 1999). It was a prolific time for La Nueva Canción Chilena, one that abruptly changed with the coup of 1973 and the violent repression that marked Augosto Pinochet’s military junta. La Nueva Canción Chilena transformed during the years following the coup, resurfacing in the face of oppression as Canto Nuevo in the mid 1970s. Political dissent under the new regime was severely curbed, often through the use of violence, as Pinochet undertook a campaign to eradicate socialism in Chile. Among those silenced were musicians such as Victor Jara who was arrested shortly after the coup, tortured and murdered. The Parra family fled to Mexico while both Inti Illimani and Quilapayún, touring through Europe at the time of the coup, settled in Italy and France respectively to escape persecution. The military junta went so far as to entirely ban instruments such as the charango or the kena, so strong was their association with socialism under La Nueva Cancion Chilena. And yet the movement did not die. With the loosening of censorship and the resurgence of indigenous instruments in the years of 1975 and 1976, musicians once again began to write songs in the tradition of New Song, drawing on folk instruments and genres while necessarily employing poetic techniques in their songwriting to obscure the political content of their lyrics. The development of the New Song movement coincided with a dialogue that was emerging between progressive Catholic clergy in Latin America and Marxist ideology, which resulted in the movement known generically as Liberation Theology. Responding in part to the Cuban revolution (1959) and taking its cue from the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (Vatican II, 1962-1965), the Catholic church in Latin America sought a more practical approach to the social problems, namely poverty and oppression, plaguing much of the continent. In 1968, one year prior to the first New Song festival in Chile, the Second Conference of Latin American Bishops was held in Medallín, Colombia where bishops from various parts of the continent gathered to address the

28 unique challenges facing the church in Latin America with respect to Vatican II. The result of this meeting was a series of documents produced by the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (Latin American Episcopal Council, or CELAM) analyzing the situation within Latin America from a sociological perspective, taking into account the relationship between the economic, political, social, and religious spheres while redefining the role of the church in addressing the problems outlined therein. Loosely applying Marxism as a practical tool in their analysis, the documents concluded that the underlying cause of poverty and oppression was intimately linked with the division of society into classes and the inherent struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor promulgated by a capital-driven economic system. In an effort to combat this situation and bring about effective and constructive change, the authors of the CELAM documents proposed a radical shift in the church’s role within the community, calling on the clergy to take an active part in helping the common people liberate themselves through a system of consciousness-raising adopted from Paolo Freire’s literacy method. As Michael Dodson notes, “Liberation thus becomes a struggle to break out of the cycle of political dependence, perpetual economic debility and social injustice which characterizes Latin America” (Dodson 1979, 210). While not necessarily endorsing revolution, the CELAM documents implied a necessary “engagement of the church in class struggle” (Ibid.), arguing that the history of the church is essentially one of salvation as the Bible is replete with God’s compassion and support for the poor and the oppressed in their struggles (Christian Smith 1991, 32-45). Sociologist Christian Smith notes that from the perspective of the CELAM documents, God “is not an impassive, detached Other, but is instead intimately involved with and totally invested in human history, especially the experience and destiny of the poor and suffering” (Ibid., 32). It is therefore God’s will that the church become directly involved in the plight of the oppressed. As a response to the call for a more humanistic church, Comunidades Eclesiales de Base (Base Ecclesial Communities—CEB) were among many projects established throughout Latin America. With its origins in the “worker-priest experiment” (Dodson 1979, 206) of the 1960s, CEBs were social groups organized within the parish that addressed issues relevant to the parishioners of that particular community. Initiated by

29 the priest, yet ultimately developed and led by the laity, CEBs became the primary manifestation of Liberation Theology in Latin America (Smith 1999, 19-20; see also Tommie Sue Montgomery 1983, 67). The right to organize was among the more pressing issues, committing priests in their support of the community to stand by their parishioners, often literally in protest. This direct involvement in social and political affairs placed the church directly in harms way as the military and ruling elite targeted parishes, priests, and nuns involved in what they considered subversive activity. A number of clergy were harassed, kidnapped, tortured, and/or murdered. Among the more well known cases is that of Oscar Romero, the popular El Salvadoran Archbishop whose strong rhetoric and support for his fellow El Salvadorans in their struggles resulted in his assassination during a mass on March 24, 1980 (Ibib., 76-81). Like Nueva Canción, Liberation Theology manifested itself in different ways, reflecting and responding to the specific social and political situation within each respective country in Latin America. While the extent of the relationship between Liberation Theology and Nueva Canción remains to be addressed, it is clear that the message and mission of the church coincided with that of the budding New Song movement. Within Chile, the formation of Christians for Socialism, which denounced the traditional role of the church in maintaining the status quo, coincided with the rise of the UP and Allende. “¿Qúe Dirá El Santo Padre?” by Violeta Parra (Fig. 3) reflects this open criticism of the church. As Leo recalls, it was through this particular song that he first encountered the music and message of Nueva Canción: It was New Years Eve, the 31st of December between 11 p.m. and midnight. Of course, there is a tradition in Ecuador where people make “los años viejos” [effigies representing the old year], wear masks and make thematic skits dealing with comical situations or criticizing the government, criticizing things or people. So that day, we went out to see “los años viejos,” but what we saw [were] these dolls. They were a representation of Uncle Sam, the United States – imperialism, a representation of our government and how it sold itself out. And from the tower of the church, this music came from a speaker, music by a group called Quilapayún, that said [singing], “Yankee, Yankee, cuidado, cuidado”[Yankee be careful]. This was a piece by Quilapayún [referring] to Vietnam. [Quilapayún] was a Chilean group that composed music with social content—very political and very powerful. They had always criticized and made an analysis of the political situation in Latin America as well as being in solidarity with Vietnam. That

30 music! with Violeta Parra singing, “Que dirá el santo padre, que vive en Roma, que le están degollando, a su paloma” [what would the pope say, living in Rome, that they are plucking the feathers of his dove] and so all this type of music one heard and said, “wow, what is this?” and coming from the church!ii

And it was ultimately through the church that Leo initially became involved with the social programs proposed in part by the CELAM documents, and met the members of Jatari.

“¿Qué Dirá El Santo Padre” “What would our Holy Father say?”

Miren cómo nos hablan de libertad Look how they speak to us of liberty cuando de ella nos privan en realidad. when in reality they deprive us of it. Miren cómo pregonan tranquilidad Look how they proclaim tranquility cuando nos atormenta la autoridad. when their authority torments us.

¿Qué dirá el santo Padre que vive en Roma, What would our Holy Father who lives in Rome say? que le están degollando a su paloma? That they are cutting the throat of the Holy Spirit?

Miren cómo nos hablan del paraíso Look how they speak to us of paradise cuando nos llueven balas como granizo. When bullets rain down on us like hail. Miren el entusiasmo con la sentencia Look at the enthusiasm with which they pass sentence sabiendo que mataban a la inocencia. Knowing that they kill the innocent.

¿Qué dirá el santo Padre . . . What would our Holy Father say? . . .

El que ofició la muerte como un verdugo He who officiated the death as an executioner tranquilo está tomando su desayuno. Calmly eats his breakfast. Con esto se pusieron la soga al cuello, With this they put the rope around the neck, el quinto mandamiento no tiene sello. The fifth commandment has no seal.

¿Qué dirá el santo Padre . . . What would our Holy Father say? . . .

Mientras más injusticias, señor fiscal, The more injustices, Mr. Prosecutor, más fuerzas tiene mi alma para cantar. The more strength my soul has to sing. Lindo segar el trigo en el sembrao, Seeing them reap the wheat in the fields, regado con tu sangre Julián Grimau. Spilled with your blood, Julian Grimau.

¿Qué dirá el santo Padre . . . What would our Holy Father say? . . .

Figure 3: “¿Qué Dirá El Santo Padre” by Violeta Parra (1976).

Embarking upon his own path as a musician dedicated to social issues, Leo’s subsequent appropriation of the ideology of Nueva Canción and Liberation Theology,

31 discussed below, will have a tremendous impact on his perception and understanding of world, which will serve to guide him in the years to come.

Tiempo Nuevo and Jatari: Appropriation

Along with university students, professionals, and others who shared a common interest in seeking positive change and improvement in the overall social, educational, and political situation of their country, Leo made excursions to outlying provinces such as Chimborazo and Río Bamba. There they built clinics, taught people to read, and participated in local mingas (cooperative work efforts) among other projects. As a result, Leo was exposed to and soon became familiar with the various folk traditions of the indigenous people among whom he worked. As such, he became increasingly cognizant of what he perceived as a “cultural invasion” by the United States and Europe, the result of which was the devaluation of their indigenous heritage, as he explains: One of the reasons for doing this music was to recapture the cultural values and create consciousness in the youth, consciousness concerning the cultural penetration, the alienation to which we were subjected. Alienation in the sense that we were valuing things that weren’t necessarily in keeping with our reality. In Ecuador and in Latin America in general, [there] existed an apathy towards ones own cultural values – not wanting to know ones own roots. When listening to a san juanito, a traditional song of the rural areas, the people don’t identify with that, the people of the city don’t identify with that. There is a tendency to identify with that which is foreign, with that which is Western, with that which is classical music, far from our reality. So, that was our job, to make the youth understand that we are people with much culture and with strong roots.iii

It was also during this time that Leo met a group of university educated musicians performing in the vein of Nueva Canción. Below, Leo explains the significance of his encounter with Jatari with respect to his formation as a musician:

Within this entire process, I met a group of young university students who later, with their roots in 1970, 71, came to form the group Jatari in Quito, Ecuador. Jatari became one of the first groups who, followers of the Chilean process up to a certain point, came to do that which was initiated by Violeta Parra in Chile, Atahualpa Yupanqui in Argentina, or Daniel Viglietti in Uruguay, and many others. So, the same process took root, the same path. How I appear on the scene is that I met the members of Jatari in a church in one of the old neighborhoods, playing in the church of San Blas, almost in the heart of the colonial district of

32 Quito. When they played a very modern type of music in the church, the people, [especially] the youth gathered. So it was a means of attracting youth to the church. By playing this type of music, there developed a kind of music that was more in touch with the youth.

. . . Jatari used instruments that weren’t common. They started to sing songs that weren’t necessarily the kind typically heard, like rock, on the radio, in a bar, or in the corner store. It was a different type of music, and that’s what attracted me. They began to sing songs with different rhythms that weren’t necessarily Ecuadorian rhythms. But I wasn’t a member of Jatari at that time. Like I said, I just passed by to listen and watch. They weren’t even my friends. I simply listened from afar, as a stranger. And I watched what they played and what they did and then I returned to my job. I would escape from work. Luck had it that I was a messenger and I would leave the factory, run to the bank to do some errands, and then I would stop by [to listen] when I knew the musicians would be practicing, and later went on to do the rest of my job, deliver messages to the offices of lawyers, architects, whatever I had to do.

. . . Along the way, I simply appeared with my guitar, which belonged to my brother. My mother had given him the guitar, but I learned to play it. I don’t know how. But I came by this group of students known as the JEC there on the corner of the Virgin, now el San Juan de Dios. It was the home of the clergy and that’s where three or four youth groups of various high schools functioned. I arrived there for some reason and that’s where I got my start, playing guitar and singing these new songs that caught the students’ attention, and that’s where I believe I started recruiting people interested in forming a group.iv

Between 1970 and 1975, Leo formed three musical groups, Pajuña (a martyred indigenous leader), Yucanchi llacta (Quichua, “our land”), and Tiempo Nuevo (New Era), whose music and function were similar to that of Jatari, as he continued to explain:

Between Tiempo Nuevo and Jatari, we began doing something parallel. We were two groups strengthening the musical/social awareness idea in Quito, Ecuador. We participated in solidarity programs with factory workers on strike. We were there to animate and support the workers in their struggle. In the rural areas, we were there participating in a celebration and at the same time learning about their celebration. In classrooms we were there educating, making students aware of our own cultural roots, awakening their consciousness.v

Armed with bombos, quenas, charangos, and other instruments commonly associated with the indigenous cultures of the central Andes, both Jatari and Tiempo Nuevo played crucial roles in the dissemination of Andean musical traditions and instruments among the urban middle and upper classes through their music, performing at

33 local peñas and festivals. Their function, as Leo saw it, was twofold: to make the middle and upper class populations within the urban center of Quito aware of the richness and strength of their cultural roots, as well as to awaken within them a sense of consciousness regarding the social and political situation in which they found themselves at the moment. In 1975, by this time married to an American volunteer worker (Kathy) and fully committed to his music and work within the Nueva Canción movement in Ecuador, Leo joined Jatari only to emigrate to the United States a few years later at the age of 24. While short lived, his involvement with Tiempo Nuevo and Jatari at the height of the New Song movement left an indelible mark that provided a sense of purpose and continuity in his life and work abroad. The following pages recount Leo’s experiences within the United States, focusing on his adaptation to, and appropriation thereof with respect to those dimensions engendered during his past experiences with Nueva Canción within Ecuador.

Part Two: United States (Expanding Dimensions)

Iowa: Displacement

Leo’s initial experience within the United States reflects the disjuncture typically associated with displacement, as he struggled to define himself and his place within a foreign context. A major turning in Leo’s life, the decision to leave Ecuador was spurred by circumstances surrounding Kathy’s status as a volunteer teaching music at El Centro del Muchacho Trabajador (the Working Boys Center) in Quito, Ecuador. Faced with many options at the time, Leo was offered the opportunity to immigrate to the United States with the help of Kathy’s parents who lived in Boone, Iowa. As Kathy recalls:

There was an incident that happened at the center and there was a very big disagreement between the priest, the Jesuit who ran the center and myself. And it

34 was a decision that the both of us made [Leo and Kathy], . . . it seemed to be the right opportunity then, thinking if we are gonna have children who are a part of two worlds maybe it would be a good time to go and introduce at least Luke [the first-born] to this new world and I didn’t even know that I was pregnant with you at that time, but it seemed to be the right time. Grandma already had the ticket – “We’ve got a ticket for you” – at that time they didn’t even know Leo. I came home at Christmas and showed them a slide and said “mom, this is the man I’m going to marry” and mom held it up to the light bulb, and said “oh” and here’s this “negrito.” So it seemed to be the right time and that’s how it was. And our intention was to come back and be here no longer than two years and then go right back. But little did we know that we would have three children right in a row. You and Luke aren’t even a year apart and then Nicolete is a year later, and it’s awfully hard to uproot everybody and go back and forth.

Uprooted from everything with which he was familiar, Leo found himself struggling with culture shock as an immigrant and young father in the midst of a small, conservative town in Iowa at this time unaccustomed to foreigners, let alone an interracial couple. While Leo speaks little of their first two years in Iowa, it left a profound impact on Kathy whose vivid memories of the experience still haunt her as a difficult period in their lives:

It was a difficult time for Leo; It was probably more of a difficult time for me when we came back to the States because I came back as a wife and mother of one and pregnant with another and the only one who could really speak the language; Leo knew no English whatsoever, and he had not even a high school diploma. He didn’t drive, I couldn’t send him to the corner store to get milk [dad laughs], . . . it was pretty difficult. The other hard thing of course was . . . culture shock. And I assimilated very quickly to Latin American life, and so coming back and trying to find my way then as, again, a wife and a mother and then to be a supporter of the family; Leo did get a job very quickly building silos, and that was a temporary job cause it was only during the summers, but he had the chance to travel a little bit and get to know the countryside. But we ended up living with my family; we were in Iowa, in Boone, Iowa, this tiny little corn, farming community, very conservative. Leo of course was learning English, he learned how to drive a car, he’s very good with children and so he was fine with the babies; it was me who needed to find out what was going on more I think at that moment. But then as time went on I saw as far as music was concerned, I was teaching in a parochial school, I taught music, elementary music at Sacred Heart Elementary, but Leo stopped playing the instruments completely, didn’t touch the instruments. Now you need to remember that he was at a time of such growth when he was with Jatari and when we were in Ecuador that he, . . . I mean, of the twenty-four hours a day, probably four were silent and the rest was his charango playing. And so you can imagine how it was coming to the States and . . . him not

35 picking it up. At first he’d play a little bit and then little by little he’d just let it go completely and I was just seeing him die. So, part of Leo’s story is that he, . . . had no understanding of (here he was in the belly of the beast) what was he doing . . . here he has this whole commitment in his life to New Song with his music and now how is he going to do it? It just was totally out of place.

Displaced from its original context, the music no longer held meaning for Leo among the open plain of the Midwest. Yet, as Kathy recognized, the music, and perhaps more importantly the ideology propelling the music, was such an integral aspect of Leo’s being that he was, in a literal sense, slowly dying. Alarmed by this transformation, Kathy urged Leo to continue using his music. The context of Leo’s first performance in Iowa, however, made even more apparent the incongruity between his life and work as a musician in Ecuador and that within the United States. And yet Kathy insisted that he continue, picking up the guitar and offering to translate as encouragement. Now far removed from the experience, Leo laughs as Kathy recalls their initial performances in Iowa, first Leo as a soloist in a bar, then later appearing in a school with Kathy as a duo:

KL: it started out in Iowa where I just suggested that he use his music. And so Leo was washing dishes at that time in a motel and they had a bar, and so they said “yes, you can play,” and Leo had a list of 200 songs [laughter, turning to Leo] remember that? And of course they were all these Angel Parra songs, and Quilapayun, all these, you know, “aghh” [passionate, gutteral sound] gutsy songs [laughs]

PL: In a bar?

KL: In a bar. Oh, it just about . . . and I went [laughter]. Oh it was terrible, everybody was drinking, they [didn’t] understand him from a hill of beans as he was singing in Spanish. And at that time, you know now there’s a lot of Hispanic people around and you hear languages, you gotta remember that we were in this conservative little place. This was like in 1979. And so of course and Leo, in the first place if he could translate it was a pretty bad place to be translating what it was that he was singing. And people heard all the emotion, and they’d clap, and even if they knew what it was about I’m sure . . . I don’t know. It was just not the place and so Leo, again just, arg [lets out an exasperatted sigh]

PL: Disheartened?

KL: Very disheartened. So when I said you [need to] do this, one of the places that you can do it, because I’m an educator, that’s my background, I went to school at St. Cloud State and I graduated in elementary education with a music

36 minor and, of course, my dad is a music teacher my mom is a piano teacher, music teacher, so music is a strength of mine, that’s how I ended up in Ecuador anyway, because I was volunteering but through education and music. So, I said to him from an educators view point, “this belongs in the schools.” Now this is in 1979 and you didn’t have ethnic programs in schools and he said “but I don’t speak English” and I said “well I’ll come with you and I’ll translate.” So he thought about it and he thought that would be okay, and then he said “well, if you’re going to be coming and translating, do you think you could accompany me on this song?” And, of course, Leo had been teaching me a lot but we never played together or anything before that. So I’d pick up the guitar, he’d show me, he’d tell me what he’d want to hear and pretty soon I’d be accompanying him and he’s going “well, as long as you’re accompanying me, do you think you could put in a harmony in this part?” [laughs] So we did a school program and then we ended up moving to Minnesota.

While struggling through his experiences in Iowa, Leo was able to relocate himself within Minnesota in large part through his music. It is here that Leo successfully bridged the gap between his life within Ecuador and the United States, building upon the memories of his past as he continued to grow in his commitment to the ideology of the New Song movement through his work as a musician.

Minnesota: Appropriation and New Understanding

Settling in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, a predominantly Polish neighborhood bordering Northeast Minneapolis, Leo and Kathy continued to use their music as a way of networking and building community, playing at local cultural events and fairs. It was not long, however, before they found a receptive audience for their music and its message, and it was through the interest of a few key individuals, such as social activist Judy Gold and ethnomusicologist Cliff Sloan who they met while performing at the Festival of Nations, that they networked with local Latin American interest and solidarity groups such as the Victor Jara Memorial Fund (later the Minnesota Committee for New Song), as well as arts and education organizations such as COMPAS and Young Audiences. Discussing the above experiences, Kathy and Leo relate the following:

KL: Okay, and then we came to Minnesota and this was really a huge turning point for us because as soon as we came here to Minnesota I was still at home and Leo started working at ACME and that’s how we ended up here in Columbia

37 Heights. There was a family friend, or a friend of a family member of ours who said “yes we’d hire him here in Columbia Heights if he can come up to Minnesota.” So we came to Minnesota, we lived in a tiny apartment, and Leo started taking classes right away in Fridley at the community center there. And there was a woman who was married to a Peruvian, and she was very interested in Leo and wanted to help him with his English, but Leo also said that he was a musician [and] that he played; well, she said that “ do you know that we have here in Fridley in the community school a mini festival and people from different ethnic groups will come and they’ll play?” So this was like in 1980 . . . So she said “I can get you in to play,” she said “it’s not a big thing but,” she said, “it’s really, it’ll be really nice, because we’ve got Polish people and we have a Chinese person, and . . .” there were some basic groups that were represented. So Leo and I worked up a couple of pieces and it was really fun for us and we went there. And of course the place was packed with people and it was the first time they had heard that kind of music around here and they were just super excited. Well, at the same time one of the Polish dancers had heard us, walked past . . . and he said “you guys need to be a part of the huge festival in Saint Paul called the Festival of Nations; now, it’s the first of its kind that we had here in the Midwest and it’s the biggest in the Midwest. . . . “I’ll get you in, it’s next week.” So Leo and I went there and we brought you kids, all three of you in a wagon. And of course there was no money what-so-ever, we had to pay our own . . . parking and of course there’s no way we could eat there; we brought sandwiches (peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for you guys to eat) and sat you in the wagon right there on the stage; and we’re carting the charango and the bombo and guitarra (guitar) and quena with us and we get up on stage and we play. We were the only Latin American act that there and for years we were the only ones. And so we met two really important people in that first time, we met Judy Gold, and Judy Gold was a person . . . [turning to Leo]

LL: [who] was involved with different groups of people, plus she did have a program on the radio (I don’t remember the name of the program but it was about Latin American music) and she did invite us to meet other people. She really encouraged us to meet other people . . .

KL: who were involved in Latin American politics, in Latin American issues, she was very active on that level. And the other person that was really important was Cliff Sloan . . . an ethnomusicologist, and he came up to us and said . . . “you guys need to be going into schools.” And of course . . . this is how we thought of our music anyway.

These initial performances at events such as the Festival of Nations were important in the sense that they allowed Leo and Kathy to branch out within the community, connecting not only with individuals such as Cliff Sloan and Judy Gold, but with the greater Hispanic community as well. With a relatively small population of Latin

38 Americans residing in the Twin Cities during the early 1980s, many Hispanics were far removed from their homeland and cultural traditions, including their music. Leo explains that the charango became a medium for him through which to network with various segments of the Hispanic population, thus creating a sense of community in the process:

When we first started playing here in the US, as your mother said, the Festival of Nations was our first [big] platform. This was a good experience for us—to meet people, form relationships, and create community, because, imagine, we arrived with a charango, bombo, and guitar to play on stage in a place where people of different cultures gathered. Every now and then there appeared a Bolivian, a Colombian or a Venezuelan with tears in their eyes, hearing after so many years the music of their own country, a music that was probably kept in the back of their mind or memory. For this reason they came to us with tears in their eyes and said, “Thank you, thank you for making us return to our hearts [touching our hearts]. We have not listened to this music in years. We have practically forgotten it.” So in this way we went creating community. With the Bolivians it was through the charango. We met many Bolivians that way. With the Venezuelans it was through the cuatro and the Venezuelan songs that we sang-- the polos margariteños, joropos and so on. Like that, in general, right? In that way, we built community. In that way we met many important people.vi

The necessity for support networks and organizations speaking to the needs and interests of local Hispanic immigrants prompted the emergence of organizations such as the Victor Jara Memorial Fund, the Resource Center of the Americas and Sanctuary groups (e.g., Pastors for Peace), which provided a platform and audience base within the Twin Cities amenable to the music and message of Nueva Canción. Even before Leo and Kathy arrived in Minnesota, a small collective of local and Latin American artsists, including writers, muralists, actors and playwrights, brought to Minnesota two of Chile’s leading New Song ensembles, Inti Illimani and Quilapayún, under the banner of the Victor Jara Memorial Fund in an effort to raise awareness concerning the political situation in Chile and Latin America in general during the time. Shocked and inspired, Leo saw the potential for continuing his work within the New Song framework and he soon approached the members of the Victor Jara Memorial Fund:

Upon my entry, upon arriving to this group [the Victor Jara Memorial Fund], which was inspired and motivated by the New Song movement and the similarity of the work, I began to encourage the members to continue producing concerts – because that was what was already being done -- concert productions geared

39 towards whatever group or individual musician was on tour. And so what one did was simply use the connections on the East or West Coast and call to ask who was on tour, who was coming to present themselves, and from there acquire the funds in order to make a concert happen with the presence of these groups or these persons here in the United States. The end result was to continue making known these artists and their work in this area, and through their music, make known the conditions facing that particular country at the moment. Also the purpose was to create a level of consciousness, of solidarity with these communities in their struggles or in their process of social change. So, this was our motivation. Likewise, my involvement with the New Song movement in Ecuador, influenced by the New Chilean Song, gave me a sufficient basis for continuing to make music, and for encouraging and attracting this kind of music to Minnesota and to these areas of the United States. Our activities, my work as a musician, continued taking on more consciousness and we discovered that our work was important here in the Twin Cities. Above all, the work we do together, Leo and Kathy Lara as a duo, opened many doors and kept us plenty occupied running from one place to another.vii

Guided by his experience with the New Song movement in Ecuador, Leo helped transform the Victor Jara Memorial Fund, which soon became the Minnesota Committee for New Song, sharpening its function and purpose within the community as a grassroots organization responding to the social and political situation not only within Latin America, but locally as well. Between the years of 1985 and 1994, the Minnesota Committee for New Song produced seventeen concerts bridging Latin American musicians active within Nueva Canción such as Los Folkloristas, Quilapayún, Inti Illimani, los Parra and Daniel Viglieti, with local ones, including poet Meridel LeSeur, Native American poet and spoken word artist John Trudell, and Native American flutist Mitch Walking Elk, to name a few. Leo and Kathy explained the purpose of the New Song Committee as follows:

LL: The work of the New Song Committee here in the Twin Cities was our commitment, my commitment, to bring what are the members [artists, musicians] of the New Song movement here to the Twin Cities . . . And we began a work of “ants,” one could say. “Ants” in the sense that it was a “grassroots” job, as it is said here. It was very elemental from the beginning, using the potential available within the group—people who were specialized in issues of producing a poster, those who understood how to manage various means of communication, newspapers, publications, and all that process, from how to put together a budget or write a grant, to the finances of the entire event. For the most part, one can say it was all grassroots. As Kathy mentioned, the issue of putting up posters

40 throughout the city, in strategic areas, we ourselves did until two, three, and four in the morning with hammer and nail.

KL: And that was after working all day spinning metal and coming home to you [children] who were so little, and from there, at ten at night, he would walk through the streets just to do all that.

LL: So that was our function here as a group—working through the community, for the community.viii

Drawing upon the resources available from within as well as from without the committee, including similar organizations in other parts of the United States (e.g., La Peña in Berkley, California), the Minnesota Committee for New Song filled auditoriums and theaters such as the University of Minnesota’s Wiley Hall, the College of Saint Catherine’s Shaugnessy auditorium (Saint Paul), the World Theatre (Saint Paul), and the Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis), to name a few. As Leo notes, the significance of these concerts was not so much the music in and of itself, but the resulting linkages formed and reinforced between different organizations and individuals with varying agendas yet faced with similar issues:

It was an entire festival, not simply the act of putting on an event. It was not simply about putting on a concert. The idea was to bring all the expressive cultural forms to a cultural festival. We had people who made shirts with social motifs, people who sold books or had libraries, people who were working with social issues, women against war, women with problems of abuse, and we tried to bring all the social issues and organizations in solidarity to a social gathering where [people] could see what was really happening here in the city – with the different groups.ix

The 1980s in particular proved to be a productive time in the way of networking for both Leo and Kathy as a duo and the Minnesota Committee for New Song in general, as various solidarity groups emerged in response to the growing conflict in Central America and the contentious involvement of the United States in those affairs. Organizations such as the Resource Center of the Americas and Pastors for Peace collaborated with Leo, Kathy and the committee in an effort to raise awareness as well as challenge the contemporaneous administration’s foreign policy with respect to Latin America in general. As Leo emphasizes below, the relationship between the various

41 solidarity groups and the New Song movement in general with respect to their purpose within the community was one of mutual dependence:

One could say that we developed practically parallel to one another [the Minnesota Committee for New Song and the Resource Center for the Americas] because for me, the one did not exist without the other. They are two fundamental things because this is the process of the New Song movement, the philosophy of New Song. It is not a musical issue that appears simply “because.” If so, then why do it at all? [It appears] as a result of the social conditions occurring in certain regions, areas within each country. So, here there exists a platform of political education with respect to the situations of those countries that are in the process of [social change]. As I said, we grow parallel to one another, responding with art, with culture, to this development of . . . , and strengthening these movements because music, art responds to the strengthening and clarification of consciousness and to the growth of movements.x

As such, Leo and Kathy quickly defined their place within the process discussed above, providing a voice through song for the struggles and issues facing people not only in Latin America, but within the Twin Cities as well. As Kathy notes while marveling over the work reflected in their resume (see appendix), which is only partially complete, there was no shortage of work during the 1980s and early 1990s, a direct result of the heightened awareness and involvement of the general public with respect to Latin American issues. Yet with the changing political climate, the collapse of the Sanctuary movement, a general loss of interest, and the ever-changing demographics of the Twin Cities, Leo and Kathy’s work as a duo and through the Minnesota Committee for New Song shifted from the political to the cultural and educational arena. In addition to the numerous concerts produced by Leo in conjunction with the Minnesota Committee for New Song, they organized a bi-monthly Peña, a venue for folk musicians and other artists made popular in Latin America by Violeta Parra and her two children, Isabel and Angel, during the late 1960s (see New Song and Liberation Theology above). The Peña provided a platform for many local artists, including poet Luis Almayhue and Ancestor Energy, photographer Dick Bancroft, Brazilian bands Mocoto and Beira Mar Brasil, Paraguayan singer Lisa Bogado, and folk singer Larry Long to name a few. As Kathy notes, the intent was neither solely to provide entertainment nor provide more performance opportunities for themselves, but to foster a creative space in which local interests and concerns could be expressed:

42 [Leo has] done a lot to bring the music of the people to the forefront. And that’s what he’s wanted to do. It’s never been him. For example, with New Song and having all these huge groups coming through, Leo says “you know, I could’ve put Leo and Kathy on every program, but” he said “ that wasn’t what it was about.” It was getting as many artists in the community out there in the forefront as possible; . . . getting as many people from our community that work for the people and for the community as spokespersons for their community. Dad’s made sure that they have a platform to play on.

From artists involved with Civil Rights and labour issues to those addressing military aggression and domestic abuse, La Peña opened its doors and spoke to many in the Twin Cities during the years between 1989 and 1997. With no physical space to call home and debilitating cuts in funding, the Peña eventually folded as Leo and Kathy increased their work within the Minnesota school system. Suffering a back injury in 1990 that terminated his employment as a manual labor for a local metal spinning company, Leo turned to music full time, taking his program to schools as an artist-in-residence through the Minnesota State Arts Board, COMPAS, and Young Audiences. Since that time, Leo has appeared in numerous schools throughout Minnesota, working with students ranging in age and ability (including autistic and disabled children) from pre-kindergarten to post secondary. To this day, both Leo and Kathy maintain a rigorous performance schedule at schools, community centers, and universities, informing audiences throughout Minnesota about various Latin American traditions and cultures through music. Leo’s adaptation within the new context presented by his immigration to the United States reflects a unique form of appropriation as he draws upon his previous understandings, informed by those dimensions engendered during his formative years in Quito, and integrates them with his current experiences. Involving the work of memory, it is this process that allows for the successful mediation and transformation of one’s sense of self and place as we shall see in Chapter Four. Before endeavoring a more thorough analysis of Leo’s life history, however, Chapter Three will explore in greater detail Leo and Kathy’s music, or more precisely their use thereof, within the United States since the 1980s. Following Shelemay, we shall see how memory, enabled through performance, serves to mediate the disjuncture created by migration.

i En la Universidad se dan una serie de actividades estudiantiles, era un flujo de estudiantes, una Universidad bastante grande, pero también al mismo tiempo habían confrontaciones entre la policía y el ejercito, dependiendo de la situación por lo cual los estudiantes estaban protestando. Generalmente, eran comunes el alza de los pasajes de los transportes. Los estudiantes salían a las calles a protestar porque sabían que el pueblo no podía pagar esa cantidad para poderse movilizar, y además que al subir el transporte, . . . subían los costos de los productos de primera necesidad, arroz, azúcar, etc. etc. Y claro, las condiciones económicas se agrababan más y más porque una vez que subían una cosa, el gobierno no podía regular, ni tenian formas para regular estos cambios, estas alzas de los precios de transporte y alimentos de primera necesidad. En este proceso creo que se fue formando un nivel de conciencia personal mio, por mi parte, y un cuestionamiento del porque se daban estas cosas. O sea no era fácil vivir enfrente de la Universidad, estar llorando cada vez con los gases lacrimógenos y el sonar de las balas que pasaban por los techos de las casa. Muchas veces las Universidades se veían desoladas porque se habían cerrado por decreto del gobierno por uno, dos, tres años, y eran unos edificios desolados que solo se veían militares parados en una u otra esquina. Toda esta situación de crecer enfrente de la Universidad tuvo un efecto para mi nivel de conciencia—despertar más adelante. ii Era un año viejo, “el 31 de Diciembre entre las once y las 12 de la noche, claro hay un tradición en Ecuador que se hacen los años viejos, y con mascaras/caretas, y se hacen escenarios con motivos de situaciones graciosas o criticando al gobierno, criticando cosas, o personas. Entonces ese día salimos andar a ver los años viejos esa noche . . . Pero lo que había ahí eran estos muñecos, estaba una representación de lo que es el Tío Sam, los Estados Unidos – el imperialismo, una representación del gobierno y como se vendía la patria. En la torre de la iglesia había música en auto parlantes, música de este grupo Quilapayún que decía [sings] “Yankee, Yankee, Yankee, cuidado, cuidado,” es una producion de Quilapayún, a Vietnam, Es un grupo Chileno que hace un poco de música de contenido social bastante político, bastante fuerte y siempre criticando, y a hecho análisis de la situación política Latino Americana, y en solidaridad con el pueblo de Vietnam. Y esa música, con Violeta Parra, [singing] “Que dirá el santo padre, que vive en Roma, que le están degollando, a su paloma.” Entonces todo este tipo de música se oía, se dice “wow,” no? “Que es esto?! . . .Y desde la iglesia! iii Una de las rasones del que-hacer musical era el rescatar los valores culturales y crear consiencia en la juventud, consciencia sobre la penetracion cultural la alineacion a la que estabamos sujetos. Alineacion al sentido que estabamos valorizando cosas que no eran necesariamente de acorde a nuestra realidad. Pues en Ecuador siempre ha habido un, -en Latino-America en general- [quemeimportismo] por su propios valores culturales el no querer conocer a sus raicez mismas. Cuando se escucha un san juanito, una cancion tradicional del campo, la gente no se identifica con eso. Hay una tendencia de identificarse con

lo que es foraneo, con lo que es Occidental, con lo que es la musica clasica, ajena a nuestra realidad. Entonces, ese era nuestro trabajo: hacer entender a la gente de que somos gente con mucha cultura con raicez bastantes fuertes.

iv Dentro de todo este proceso, conocí un grupo de jóvenes universitarios, que luego, al raíz de los 1970, ‘71, viene a conformar lo que es el grupo Jatari en Quito, Ecuador. Jatari viene a ser uno de los primeros grupos que, seguidores del proceso Chileno hasta cierto punto, se plantean ese que hacer que inicio Violeta Parra, ese que hacer que inicio Atahualpa Yupanqui en Argentina y muchos otros, o un Daniel Viglietti en Uruguay. Entonces nos planteamos, se plantean el mismo proceso, el mismo camino, y como me aparezco en escena yo?; es que estos muchachos los conocí en un iglesia, en uno de los barrios tocando, en la iglesia de San Blas, casi en la corazón de la ciudad vieja de Quito. Cuando ellos tocaban un tipo de música muy moderna en las iglesias se conglomeraban la gente, la juventud, entonces era un medio de atraer la juventud a la iglesia. Pero en esto tocar en este tipo de música, surgían música de tipo mas atenúa a la juventud.

. . . En el grupo Jatari usaban instrumentos que no eran instrumentos comunes. Entonces comienzan a cantar canciones que no eran necesariamente el tipo de canción que se escucha en el rock, el radio, en el bar, o en la tienda de la esquina. Es una música diferente, y eso es lo que me atrajo. Comienzan a cantar canciones con diferentes ritmos que no eran necesariamente ritmos Ecuatorianos, eran ritmos Bolivianos o Chilenos, y eso es lo que me atrajo. Pero, yo no era miembro de Jatari, como decía yo simplemente me daba un salto, a escucharlos, a mirarlos, ni siquiera eran mis amigos, de lejitos nomás, de extraño. Y miraba lo que tocaban, lo que hacían, luego me iba hacer mi trabajo, me escapaba del trabajo, [laughs]. La facilidad que tenia como mensajero era que salía de la fabrica, corría hacer unas cuestiones bancarias, las mas importantes, y luego me daba un salto cuando ya sabia cuando estaban repasando, de ahí, seguía hacer mi resto del trabajo, a las oficinas, a los abogados, y a los arquitectos, cualquier cosa que tenia que hacer.

. . . Bueno en este proceso yo simplemente vine, apareci yo con una guitarra, que no era mía sino la de mi hermano (mi mama le había dado una guitarra a mi hermano) pero yo aprendí a tocar la guitarra. [laughing] No se como, pero . . . llegué a este grupo de jóvenes que se llamaba la [JEC?] allí en la esquina de la virgen, donde ahora es el San Juan de Dios, era una casa [del cura] y allí funcionaban dos o tres grupos juveniles de varias instituciones de secundaria. Allí llegué yo por alguna razón, y comenzaba allí a tocar mi guitarra, y cantar esas canciones que les llamó la atención a ellos también [laughing]. Y así fui, creo, reclutando gente interesada en formar un grupo. v En Tiempo Nuevo ya mas o menos vamos haciendo una cosa paralela, somos dos grupos que vamos fortaleciendo la idea en Ecuador, en Quito. Entre Jatari, Tiempo Nuevo, participamos de programas de solidaridad con obreros en huelga, allí estamos nosotros para animar, [alentarles] en su proceso de lucha. En el

campo, estamos allí participando de una celebración, y también aprendiendo de su celebración. En aulas estudiantiles, estamos también allí educando, haciendoles conocer también de nuestras propias raíces culturales, despertando consciencias. vi Cuando nosotros comenzamos a tocar acá y, como tu mamá expresaba, el Festival de Naciones era nuestra primera plataforma, este fue bueno para exponernos, conocer gente, relacionarnos, crear comunidad porque imagínate tu, que llegamos con un charango, un bombo y una guitarra a tocar en un escenario, y de pronto en un lugar de donde aparecían gente de diferentes culturas, de repente aparecía un Boliviano, un Colombiano o un Venezolano y con lagrimas en sus ojos, oír después de tantos años una música de su propio país una música que lo tenia talvez atrás en su mente o su memoria. Por eso llegaban hacia nosotros con lagrimas en los ojos y decían “gracias, gracias por hacernos llegar al corazón, esta música que no habíamos escuchado en años, ya prácticamente nos habíamos olvidado,” entonces así fuimos creando comunidad, los Bolivianos por el charango (muchos Bolivianos conocimos así entonces), los Venezolanos por el cuatro y las canciones de Venezuela que cantamos (los polos margariteños, joropos y todo eso). Y así en general. Y así fuimos creando comunidad, así fuimos conociendo mucha gente importante.

vii Al entrar yo, al llegar a este grupo incentivado y motivado por el movimiento Nueva Canción y la similitud del trabajo . . . comienzo a influenciar a seguir produciendo mas conciertos – por que eso es lo que se hacia, una producción de concierto de acuerdo a que grupo o cual individuo que estaba en gira, lo que hacia es simplemente usar las conexiones de la costa este o costa oeste y llamar [para] preguntar quien esta en gira, quien viene a presentarse, y así conseguir los fondos para poder poner en marcha un concierto con la presencia de estos grupos o estas personas acá. La finalidad era de continuar haciendo conocer a estos artistas, su trabajo, en nuestra área y a través de su música las condiciones en la cual estaban travesando este país en particular, Y crear un nivel de conciencia de solidaridad con estos pueblos que estaban en pie de lucha o en proceso de cambios sociales. Entonces eso era nuestra motivación. Por otra parte el hecho de yo haber tenido este proceso dentro de la Nueva Canción Ecuatoriana, influenciada por la Nueva Canción Chilena, me dio también las bases suficientes como para continuar haciendo la música, incentivado y atrayendo la música a estos sectores, a Minnesota, a este Estado del Norte de los EE.UU. Nuestra actividad, mi actividad musical, sigue tomando mas conciencia y vamos descubriendo que nuestro trabajo es importante aquí en los Twin Cities. Mas que nada el trabajar juntos, Leo y Kathy Lara como dúo, nos abre bastantes puertas y nos mantiene bastante ocupados corriendo de un lado a otro...

viii LL: el trabajo del New Song Committee aquí en los Twin Cities es nuestro, mi compromiso, nuestro compromiso de traer lo que son miembros del movimiento de la Nueva Canción aquí a los ciudades gemelas. . . . Y comenzamos un trabajo de hormiga, así se puede decir. Hormiga en el sentido de que es un trabajo, como

se dice acá ‘grassroots.’ Bien elemental desde comenzar a usar nuestro potencial dentro de los elementos del grupo, quienes son especializados en cuestiones de producir un póster?, quienes son especializados entedidos en como manegar los medios de comunicacion?, los periódicos, la publicidad y todo este proceso. De como poner un budget, un presupuesto, de todo el costo del evento, y en general un trabajo de hormigas se puede decir. Como Kathy expresaba la cuestión de poner los pósteres por toda la ciudad, en sectores estratégicos, lo hacíamos hasta las dos, tres, cuatro de la mañana con clavo y martillo.

KL: Y eso es después de trabajar todo el día girando metales y llegar a la casa con ustedes tan chiquitos y de allí a las diez de la noche caminaba por las calles justo para hacer todo esto.

LL: Entonces eso era nuestra funcionalidad aquí en un trabajo por la comunidad, para la comunidad. ix Era un festival entero, no era simplemente el hecho de poner un evento. No era simplemente el hecho de poner un concierto. La idea era traer todas las formas expresivas culturales a una feria cultural. Teníamos personas que hacían camisetas con motivos sociales, las personas que vendían libros o librerías, las personas que estaban trabajando con problemas sociales, mujeres contra la guerra, mujeres con problemas de abuso, y todas las problemáticas sociales. Y a las organizaciones, tratábamos de atraerles a un conglomerado social, solidario, donde se vea que realmente esta pasando aquí en la ciudad, con los diferentes grupos. x Se puede decir que prácticamente le hicimos paralelamente [Minnesota Committee for New Song and the Resource Center of the Americas] porque para mi, lo uno no existía sin lo otro. Son dos cosas fundamentales porque eso es el proceso del movimiento de la Nueva Canción. La filosofía de Nueva Canción. No es una cuestión musical que aparece porque si, sino porque aparece, debido a las condiciones sociales que se van dando en determinados sectores, lugares en cada país. Entonces aquí existe una plataforma de educación política con respeto a las situaciones de los países que están en pie de lucha. . . . Como decía entonces, nosotros crecemos paralelamente respondiendo con el arte, con la cultura, a este crecimiento de, y fortaleciendo estos movimientos porque la música, el arte, responde a la fortificación y al exclareciemto de consciencia y al crecimiento de los movimientos.

REFLECTION TWO

Rifling through some papers, my father turns to me and says, “1996.” “What’s that?” I respond, pulling myself away from the book in my hand. “That’s when I got my U.S. Citizenship.” I nod, not knowing what to say. He seems lost in thought. Wonder? Disbelief? The expression on his face is difficult to decipher. Over twenty years, I think to myself. I can only imagine what emotions and memories are flashing through his mind at the moment: his life and family in Ecuador, his decision to leave, the many challenges and successes, his family and home here in the United States? It seems wrong to intrude. I become distinctly aware of the Christmas music playing in the background. The moment passes. Without another word, my father picks up his coffee and sits down to read the Sunday morning paper.

* * *

There are many questions I would like to ask my father, concerning his decision to leave Ecuador, the choices he has made in his life, and his personal struggles. And yet I hesitate. Am I afraid? Perhaps. Not so much of the answers, I suspect, as of the possible transformation within and between us that may occur as a result of the vulnerable space such discussions may lead. The father that I know is a combination of inherent contradictions. He is at the same time loving and stern, passionate and laconic, outspoken and aloof, tender and stubborn. Rarely, though, does he allow himself to become vulnerable. My own reluctance to open up and take that voyage with my father may stem from our lack of verbal communication over the years, exacerbated in part by my own insecurities with the Spanish language. That is not to say that our relationship is a superficial one. On the contrary, it is through music, I would argue, that we are able

48 share and cultivate a unique relationship, perhaps richer and more meaningful than through speech alone. “The charango [is] my medium,” my father tells me, speaking of his work as a musician in general. From his perspective, it is a vessel through which “to share something of one’s culture, . . . from where one comes.” For my father, I suspect that it is a means of sharing something much more profound about himself than words can express. At once frightening and captivating, the passion with which he sings seems to draw upon a profound well-spring of lived experiences. Even to those unfamiliar with Leo, the fervor of his performance conveys a level of intimacy with the music that suggests a distinction between music as a form of expression external to the self and music as an extension of the self; as an integral aspect of ones being.

* * *

Picking up the charango, I encourage my father to join me in hopes of eliciting more memories of his youth, more stories and anecdotes I might interweave as a part of my thesis. “Papa, can you show me one more time those rhythms – the bailecito, morenada, and some of the others you used to play?” A curious smile betrays his feigned disinterest as he tells me that I can find examples of those rhythms in the old records, tapes, and CDs found strewn about the house. “Here, in this house, you have an entire archive at your disposal,” he says as though mocking my own decision to leave home in pursuit of my interests in Latin American music. I can feel my ears turn slightly warm, the admonishment striking a nerve. Guilt? Shame? I quickly suppress the feeling, brushing aside the comment I know was meant in jest and begin strumming a familiar huayno. Unable to resist, my father takes another charango out of its case and begins to tune, joining in as I continue to play and hum the melody that sprang to mind. A tune often played by my father many years ago while I was still a child, I recall neither the name nor the words, yet it contains many strong associations for me. An air of familiarity, and comfort mingled with the innocence and mirth of youth is triggered in a wave of nostalgia as images of family, old friends, and past celebrations wash over me.

49 Ephemeral, the moment subsides with the last vibrations of the strings. Glancing at my father, I wonder only momentarily what memories this song might trigger for him. Hesitating, I allow the silence to fill the gap between us.

CHAPTER THREE BRIDGES OF CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING: MUSIC AND MEMORY

Active as musicians, social activists, and educators throughout Minnesota and the neighboring states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, and the Dakotas for over twenty years, Leo and Kathy interpret the traditional, ‘folkloric’ and indigenous music of the Andes region (i.e., Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile). Encompassing both the political and educational spheres, their work has taken them from political demonstrations and folk festivals to the concert hall and the classroom. Regardless of the context, their message and purpose remain consistent, drawing and building upon those set forth by New Song pioneers Violeta Parra and Victor Jara among others in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s. The diversity of repertoire and instruments they present to audiences often unfamiliar with the music and people of Latin America reflects their commitment to creating what they often refer to as “bridges of cultural understanding,” educating and raising awareness while drawing connections not only between the seemingly disparate cultures and traditions of the Andes but with those of the audience as well. Implicit in this process is the role of memory. As we shall see in the following discussion, it is the work of memory, enabled through performance, that allows for the immediate negotiation and transformation of place through the formation of these metaphorical bridges.

51 On Music and Memory

That music is an apt vehicle for bridging individuals and communities comes as little surprise when considering the discursive nature of music, here understood both in terms of its formal aspects and as a conceptual space realized through performance wherein time, place, and competing ideologies, identities, and memories are conjoined. As Shelemay notes in Let Jasmine Rain Down, “music, particularly song, provides a medium that binds together disparate strands of experience, serving as a malleable form of cultural expression able to transcend the vagaries of time and place” (1998, 213). Far from static, then, music (and tradition more generally) is dynamic in the sense that it responds to and is shaped by the immediate needs of the individual and community in an ongoing dialogue between past and present made possible through performance. Further emphasizing this point with respect to the Syrian Jewish song tradition of pizmon, Shelemay observes that the pizmonim “are at once a vital part of life as lived, connecting moments in the present to broader themes and historical memory,” a statement broadly applicable to many song traditions, including the traditional and folkloric songs of Latin America (Ibid., 171). Existing as “lived experience, absorbed into the fabric of everyday life” (Ibid.), music effectively collapses the perceived gap between past and present, collective and individual memory, allowing for the negotiation of present realities. It is through this process that the dual understanding of ‘other’ and ‘self’ is ultimately attained, or that those bridges are created. As with pizmon, memory works through various levels of the music Leo and Kathy interpret, from the more formal elements such as song texts, genre and instrumentation to the act of performance itself. Indeed, the very nature of Nueva Canción makes it especially amenable to a discussion of memory in terms of its text in that the songs often speak either directly or metaphorically to issues and events rooted in a particular time and place. As we have seen, Chilean musicians and groups such as Victor Jara, Sergio Ortega, Inti Illimani, and Quilapayún commemorated in song various aspects of the Unidad Popular (UP) agenda and Allende’s presidency between the years of 1970 and 1973. The cantata “Santa Maria de Iquique,” composed by Hector Duvauchelle and performed by Quilapayún, recounts the December 21, 1907 massacre of

52 nitrate miners in Chile who organized to demand better wages and humane working conditions. Likewise, “El Sombrero Azul,” written by Ali Primera alludes to the massacre of nearly 700 Salvadoran peasants by government soldiers at Sumpul, on the border between El Salvador and Hondurus, in May of 1980. Victor Jara’s “El Aparecido,” written in honour of Ernesto Che Guevara, commemorates the famed revolutionary’s evasion of his pursuers. New Song literature is replete with such examples, and yet, as we shall see through the work of Leo and Kathy, the message contained therein transcends both time and place by virtue of the broad applicability of the themes it addresses, such as oppression, injustice, poverty, solidarity and so on. In fact, one might argue that the primary intent of the lyrics in many Nueva Canción compositions is not so much to commemorate, but more specifically to not forget. In other words, It is a conscious attempt to root present experiences, struggles, aspirations, etc., in a historical perspective – here understood in terms of Carl C. Becker’s notion of history as the “memory of things said and done” (1932, 222). In this way, the past is embedded in the present through the work of memory. “La Llama Encendida,” written by Isabel Parra, the daughter of renowned Chilean Nueva Canción singer/songwriter Violetta Parra, “El Sombrero Azul,” mentioned above, and “El Palomo,” by Oswaldo Torres (discussed below), reflect this collapsing of past and present, commemorating specific events while anticipating the continued struggle against oppression. Less explicitly, the setting of the text itself serves as a vehicle for memory through the choice of instrumentation and genre, which in the case of Nueva Canción effectively underscores the content of the lyrics. Instruments such as the kena, siku (panpipe set), bombo, chal’chas (rattles made of hooves), and charango among others associated with the indigenous communities of Latin America, are commonly incorporated in New Song arrangements, as are those of African and European derivation (i.e., the Peruvian cajon—a box drum, and the Argentine bandoneon—a button accordion). Likewise, traditional folk song and dance genres such as the huayno (Bolivia, Peru), cueca (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile), san juanito (Ecuador), saya (Bolivia), bailecito (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile), and joropo (Venezuela), are also used. As Schechter notes, the blending of these instruments and genres is a conscious effort on the

53 part of musicians under the New Song banner to not only identify with the proletariat, but to transcend class divisions. Thus they sought to bridge the working class and rural campesinos (peasants) with the educated middle and upper class as the musicians themselves were often of middle class backgrounds (Schechter 1999, 432-437). In this regard, Leo is unique among his peers as his socio-economic status differed significantly at the time. As such, music became a means for Leo to transcend the “hierarchies of place” as suggested by Martin Stokes (1994, 4). Through the juxtaposition of folk song and dance forms, indigenous instruments, and social and political commentary, Nueva Canción artists rooted their message in the daily lives and experiences of the common man. As mentioned previously with respect to the New Song movement in Chile, so strong was the association of these instruments and song forms with the political ideology of Nueva Canción that they were banned, illustrating the relative potency of instruments and music more generally in conveying multiple meanings as visual and aural symbols. Thus was the charango transformed from a rural indigenous instrument traditionally signifying courtship to a symbol of unity and strength within the New Song framework, to one of subversion from the perspective of the ruling elite. As ethnomusicologist Stephen Feld notes (Keil and Feld 1994), meaning in music is ascribed on the part of the individual through various interpretive cognitive moves that ultimately rely upon his or her overall experience with music in general, which in turn is culturally mediated. Therefore, a listener can elicit highly individualized meanings from music regardless of whether or not specific memories are intentionally encoded within the music itself. In this way, both individual and collective memory are implicated in the process of interpreting music. As Shelemay (1998) notes with respect to pizmon, the ability of music to hold multiple and often competing individual and collective memories makes it an effective site for their negotiation. It is this aspect, I believe, that ultimately allows individuals to bridge disparate experiences, thus allowing for the negotiation or transformation of one’s immediate experience of place relative to the social context in which one finds oneself. Shelemay is careful to note, however, that it is only in and through performance that memory is conveyed and mediated. With this in mind, the following section

54 addresses the diversity of song in Leo and Kathy’s repertoire and their significance in fostering those bridges of cultural understanding with respect to performance context.

“El Palomo”

“We use our music basically three ways,” Kathy tells me during a formal interview. “We use it educationally when we go into schools or when we go anywhere – we always have to share about what it is that we are singing and why we’re singing it. We use it culturally, so we’re always a part of the festivals and anybody who wants . . . their token Latin American group, we are the ones who are called. And we will use our music politically.” It is within this last context, the political, that Leo and Kathy used their music most extensively during the 1980s and early 1990s. Reflecting on this period of their work together, they relate the following:

KL: During the ‘80s here [in the Twin Cities] it was phenomenal the things we were involved in. Any group that had an issue, and there were many, and there still are many, but you go through periods of silence – but during that time AIM was very active, American Indian Movement, and they would call us and we would be at their pow-wows or we would be at their assemblies because we were in solidarity. We too could speak to the issues of the indigenous people of Latin America. There were “artists against apartheid,” and Leo and I were invited to play at Sebathany when Angela Davis came . . . because we too could speak to the oppression of the African rooted people in Latin America.

LL: Not so much to speak about it, but to be able to . . .

KL: use our music

LL: To use the music, to bring the music [and message] which has already been spoken in our Latin American countries, to connect the issues here in the Twin Cities or the issues which the people were going through here. So it was not so much what we were able to do, it’s what we were able to sing about [the issues, the message]. That’s the main thing.

KL: When Jessie Jackson was here with the Rainbow Coalition, we were there. We’d sing a song that would speak to ‘you are the voice.’ We would pick songs that were within the New Song frame and through the song then, . . . make a connection.

LL: In other words, our philosophy was to be able to create this bridge among people, of understanding the issues which are . . .

KL: common

LL: common, yeah, [those same issues that] Latin America is going through or went through or keeps going through, people were going through here too. So that [is the] bridge of understanding and solidarity among peoples. More than anything else, [it is] the understanding of peoples, cultures.

Finding an audience amenable to the message of Nueva Canción in the many solidarity and social justice groups active in the Twin Cities during the 1980s, Leo drew upon the vast repertoire of traditional and folkloric music he amassed while singing with Jatari and Tiempo Nuevo. These include works by such songwriters as Victor Jara, Violeta Parra, and Isabel and Angel Parra, as well as by ensembles such as Inti Illimani, Quilapayún, and Los Kjarkas. Comprising the other portion of their repertoire are arrangements of traditional songs from various parts of Latin America including “Karas- Karas” (Ecuador), “La Boliviana” (Bolivia), “El Humahuaqueño” (Argentina), and “Canto del Agua” (Venezuela), among others. While much of the Nueva Canción material speaks to certain social and political issues and events rooted in a particular time and place as mentioned above, they are able to transcend both because of the relevance of its overall message. “They’re pertinent,” states Kathy almost as a matter of fact when asked about their choice of songs. “That’s what we do, we select songs that have a purpose. We don’t just play a song just ‘cause it sounds good.” Thus their repertoire adapted over the previous two decades, reflecting the particular needs demanded by the immediate context in which they found themselves. That music serves a didactic purpose remains a concern for both Leo and Kathy, regardless of whether the context is political or purely educational. Addressing an audience at a folk festival in Shawno, Wisconsin in 1988, Kathy clearly expresses their vision and purpose as musicians:

It’s really nice being here with you, and we really thank you for inviting us here. I’d like to tell you a little bit about what Leo and I do. We interpret traditional songs from Latin America and from the New Song movement. We try to reflect the cultural differences between the pueblos of Latin America and the North

56 American people, and we try to bridge those differences by gaining a better understanding of a people and their culture, and the social, economic, and political realities within which we live. We also sing as an expression of our solidarity with all people – people who are struggling for an identity; those who are struggling for freedom from oppression or for social justice, or for the right to self determination. We believe that solidarity is the tenderness of all people.

It is clear from this statement that for Leo and Kathy, music is a means rather than an end in itself. In their political work, this end is clear: to raise awareness, educating while fostering solidarity among seemingly disparate communities through their music. The relative success with which the message of the music is conveyed is in part due to the mediation of the performance itself, as the song texts are primarily in Spanish or Quichua. “The things that we had to say were very powerful things,” says Kathy, “but we didn’t say them directly. We said them by painting the image of the song that we were singing, trying to give the message in an artistic way.” In this way, not only is the language barrier overcome, but the message of the text is made more meaningful for the audience that otherwise may share little connection with the specific incident discussed within the text itself. As an example, Kathy goes on to relate a typical performance of “El Palomo,” a song from the cantata “La Vigilia” written by Oswaldo Torres (fig. 4). An allegory involving audience participation, this particular composition concerns the disappeared ones (los desaparecidos) in Chile during Agosto Pinochet’s military dictatorship. Following is an introduction to the song given by Kathy before an audience at a folk festival in La Crosse, Wisconsin in 1987, proceeded by the text and a discussion of the performance: In Latin America, there’s a phrase for what’s happening in many countries all over the world, it’s called la Guerra Sucia, or “The Dirty War.” And it speaks to all the disappeared, the people who are being taken from their homes or walking down the street and used as a terrorist act in order to keep people quiet, in order to instill fear in people so that they won’t speak out. This song is written by a Chilean whose name is Oswaldo Torres, and he puts it very symbolically in a story about a bird who takes flight and he’s looking for food for his family. He’s spotted over the mountains by a hunter and he’s shot. In the meantime, the family of birds are waiting for him and when he doesn’t come home they worry; pretty soon they gather friends and family and they go and search. And they fly through the skies looking for him. When they do find him, of course, they find him dead.

57 But there’s so much ruckus and noise that’s made by all these birds in the sky that the hunter sees them, hears them, and is frightened to death. You’ll be able to hear what happens to the bird throughout the whole song with what Leo does on the charango. And at one point he’ll clasp down on the charango and you’ll hear [imitating sound] “chica-chica-chic.” At that time we’d like you to join us in making as much noise as possible, not necessarily to kill anyone, but to break the silence, to speak out against injustices. If we know it is incorrect then we must speak out.

“El Palomo” THE DOVE Oswaldo Torres (from the cantata “The Vigil”)

Estaba el palomo volando en el cielo The dove was flying through the sky Vino el cazador, detuvo su vuelo. When a hunter came and stopped his flight.

Herida de muerte se entregá el palomo. Mortally wounded, the “palomo” succumbed. Cruel el cazador disparó en el lomo. The cruel hunter shot him in the back.

La paloma triste recorrió los cerros. The sad “paloma” searched for the hills Buscando al palomo triste desconsuelo. Seeking her “palomo,” sad and distressed.

Vienen de las nubes pajaros morenos. From the clouds came blackbirds. Señor cazador mate mi desvelo. “Mr. Hunter, kill my anxiety”

Vienen gavilanes, diucas, picaflores. Hawks, warblers and hummingbirds descend Todas muy unidas rompen los Dolores. All united to break the pain.

Todas las palomas van abriendo surcos. All the birds cut a path across the sky, Y el cazador se muere de susto. And the hunter dies of fright.

Se escucha un clamor allá en la floresta. A great clamor is heard in the wild. Todas las palomas reclaman respuesta. All the doves demand an answer.

Todas las palomas juntas por el pueblo All the doves united for the people. Si vive o si muere vayan respondiendo. In life or in death, continue to respond.

Lai, lai, lai… Lai, lai, lai,…

Figure 4: “El Palomo” from the cantata “La Vigilia” by Oswaldo Torres (Lara 1988).

Performed with only a charango and a small, yet resonant hand held tambor (drum), Leo and Kathy’s arrangement underscores the story of the dove’s fateful journey and the subsequent response of the family, an allegory for the disappeared ones and the community. A dissonant tremolo on the charango opens the piece, ominously

58 anticipating the ill-fated flight. The otherwise repetitive nature of the strophic setting is undercut by the driving 6/8 rhythm of the charango and the incessant drum whose pulse mimics that of a heart. With a return of the dissonant chords between each verse through verse four, the charango aurally depicts the struggle of the dove as he is shot and subsequently killed by the hunter. As the family begins its search, the charango and tambor build in intensity, driving the rhythm through verse six. With a short but dramatic pause, Leo mutes the charango while strumming the basic rhythmic pattern. At this point, Kathy begins a bird call, signaling the audience to join. As the noise grows, Leo begins to sing, adding the instruments for the final two climactic verses:

Se escucha un clamor allá en la floresta. Todas las palomas reclaman respuesta.

Todas las palomas juntas por el pueblo Si vive o si muere vayan respondiendo.

A great clamor is heard in the wild. All the doves demand an answer.

All the doves united for the people. In life or in death, continue to respond.

Combining poetic text with social commentary, indigenous instruments, and audience participation, the song literally roots the message in the voice of the participating audience – el pueblo: KL: . . . the idea is that it’s the voice of the people coming together. And so, of course, everybody gets that message when you say the story like that [see above]. And then you sing the song and you ask them to participate when the hunter is found and the birds make a ruckus – Leo’s playing on the charango and I start making a wailing sound and then everybody in the audience starts wailing – and it’s a powerful thing. And if you told somebody in the street “scream out because people are being killed,” people [would] go “no – what are you talking about.” But it’s very . . . music is a . . . , there’s another level of emotion there.

It is at this other level, that musical space where dichotomies such as past and present, individual and collective, and other and self are collapsed, that the ties that bind one another are realized and those bridges are formed. No longer an ‘other,’ per-se, it is within this intersubjective space that Leo, as an immigrant, is able to transcend his

59 respective place within the community. This notion, that music can break down differences, ultimately fostering mutual understanding and solidarity among peoples, takes on even greater significance within the cultural and educational sphere.

“Karas-Karas”

Upon entering Park Spanish Immersion School in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, Leo is immediately accosted by children. “Leo, Leo!” they yell out in excitement, some breaking free of their place in line to give him a hug. Watching the students react to his presence, one might mistake him for a celebrity. He is exactly that, however, to the hundreds of children both Leo and Kathy work with on a regular basis through educational programs at libraries, community centers and schools across the state in part sponsored by national and state organizations such as Young Audiences, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and COMPAS. Leo is no stranger at Park Emerson, this being his third residency besides giving several performances at the elementary school over the past few years. Enthusiastically receiving the students, Leo gives high-fives as he strolls down the hall carting a dolly with boxes full of instruments, posters, costumes, and CDs. Over the course of the following two weeks, Leo will work with five classes, three first grade and two kindergarten, sharing with them a bit of Latin American culture through music and cultural activities involving music (i.e., children’s rhymes, games, lullabies, dances, etc.). A performance will culminate the residency, allowing the students an opportunity to share with their family and friends the music learned. The program mirrors what Kathy offers on daily basis as an educator in the Minneapolis school district, through a curriculum incorporating her experience teaching music as a volunteer in Ecuador, as well as what they attempt to do together through their regular performances. Whether presenting to elementary school children, senior citizens, or young adults, Leo and Kathy provide an engaging and interactive learning experience that not only reinforces what knowledge the audience may possess concerning Latin America, but places that knowledge within what they refer to as a “living context.” One of the many traditional songs Leo and Kathy incorporate in their educational performances is “Karas-Karas,” an Ecuadorian san juanito from the southern province of

60 Cañar. Popular among children, the song serves a functional purpose as a therapeutic song and game intended to calm a child who may be hurt as well as to simply entertain. This particular song illustrates how Leo and Kathy use traditional music as a vehicle for exploring and bridging other cultures relative to ones own. The text below (Fig. 5) is in Quichua, the indigenous language spoken in Highland Ecuador.

Karas-Karas

Karas karas curiquingue Alpata aspi curiquingue Cuicata chutay curiquingue

Karas karas curiquingue Sanca huashapi curiquingue Caylodoman tigray curiquingue Chaylodoman tigray curiquingue

Figure 5: “Karas-Karas,” traditional san juan, province of Cañar, Ecuador (text provided by Leo Lara).

Introducing the song during a performance at a folk festival in La Crosse, Wisconsin in 1996, Kathy explains the following:

We’ve always heard it said that folklore and tradition [don’t] belong in a Museum, that [they] should be a part of everyday life, a part of everyday experiences. And so we’re going to take one of those everyday experiences and share it with you from a small village or community of indigenous people in Ecuador. When children play together and somebody gets hurt, often times the other children will try to distract that child by forming a circle around that child and singing a repetitive melody so that the child will all of a sudden forget about his pain and want to remain with the other children. And so, they sing the words ‘Karas-Karas Kurikingue.’ Karas-Karas is like a huge falcon, Kurikingue is a huge black bird, and the words say “scratch the earth, snag the worm, pull it behind you, pull it to the side, pull it to the other side” and as soon as the child is busied with the melody, almost hypnotized, if you will, he begins to forget about his pain and join the others.

Mimicking the movements of the blackbird as he searches for a worm, Kathy urges the children to participate. “Did you bring your claws with you today?” asks Kathy as the children form claws with their hands. “Pull it to the side, then to the other side” she says

61 pretending to scratch the ground first on the left, then on the right. Watching intently, the children follow as Kathy pretends to pull a worm out of the earth. “Now, what do you suppose happens when Johnny is running around outside on the playground and trips and falls?” she asks the children. “Leo, what happens?” Falling to the floor, Leo clutches his knee and in a loud wailing voice pretends to cry, eliciting laughter from the students. “If we were in Ecuador, pretty soon the other children would surround Johny and begin to sing: Karas-karas kurikingue, karas-karas kurikingue, and they would begin to dance,” she tells them, singing again while dancing in time with the rhythm of the san juanito. “And after a while, what do you think Johnny’s doing? Is he still crying? No! He’s up singing and dancing with the other kids!” Inviting the children to join in the refrain, Leo teaches them the repetitive melody. So contagious is the melody that many of the children leave the performance singing “Karas-Karas,” taking the song and the experience home with them. By placing the song within a context with which the audience can relate, in this case a schoolyard playground where kids play and often hurt themselves, the meaning and function of the song become readily accessible to the audience regardless of age. The experience of playing, of getting hurt, of finding support and comfort in friends, and of singing and dancing in general transcends cultural differences. Those shared experiences, then, become a common base from which the audience can approach the music and traditions of the indigenous people in the Ecuadorian province of Cañar. Describing one particular student’s response to their presentation, Kathy emphasizes the significance of those connections:

The idea is to build those bridges of understanding so that a child not only is learning about another culture and understanding, hopefully, a little bit more about another people, he’s also learning about himself, and so that [is the] whole idea. I can give you an example. Leo and I were doing a performance in a Saint Paul school and we had done our usual thing trying to talk about the three influences of Latin American music [indigenous, European, and African] and in one of the parts we grabbed one of the drums, and we were talking about the nails that were of the goat and the sheep and also the llama [chal’chas]. And the drum that we had – we had two drums at that time, and one of them was a goat hide, one was a cow hide, and one was a llama hide drum. And so this young girl . . . came running up to me afterwards – she’s probably a fifth grader – [gasps in excitement, imitating the girl] “do you know what we make our drums out of?”

62 and I said “where are you from?” and she said “Saint Paul [in matter of fact tone of voice]” and I said, “well what’s your ethnic background?” and she said ‘”well, my mom and dad are from Korea” but she said “do you know that we make our drums out of pig hide?” So here she is, a Korean girl growing up in Saint Paul watching a program, a cultural program on Latin American music and she’s connecting – making the connection. And that’s what it’s all about: connecting ourselves with one another; better understanding other people, better understanding ourselves.

As Kathy suggests above, to explore that path and venture across that bridge is to ultimately find oneself on the other end. Eager to share their own experiences, the children who approach Leo and Kathy not only come away with a better understanding of the music and traditions of Latin America, but of those they personally observe at home with their family and practice in their daily life.

* * *

As we have seen with regard to Leo and Kathy’s use of music in both the political and educational arenas, music serves to effectively mediate disparate experiences, or memories, providing a unique space realized through performance in which dichotomies such as past and present, self and other, are collapsed. The resultant dialectic is the essence of the metaphorical bridge Leo and Kathy strive to create, whether for audiences at a rally in support of striking laborers or for elementary school age children and their families. Through songs such as “El Palomo” and “Karas-karas,” Leo and Kathy are able to convey something of Latin American culture while allowing the audience to approach the music from the perspective of their own cumulative experience (Halbwachs’ structural frameworks of memory); thus the performance becomes not merely entertainment, but a transformative event. In the end, what Leo and Kathy propose through their music is a more intimate way of understanding ourselves relative to one another that takes similarity rather than difference as the point of departure.

REFLECTION THREE

I have many fond memories of my childhood, many of which revolve around the numerous performances and events I, along with my siblings Luke, Nicolete, Carmen, and now Violeta, attended as a result of our parent’s work. It seemed that our weekends and summer days were continually filled with trips to community centers, libraries, folk festivals, college campuses, coffee shops, concert halls, and other such locales both near and far. As an opportunity to explore new places and form new friendships, the experience was nothing short of an adventure. Preoccupied with setting up the instruments, tuning, or making other preparations for their performance, my parents often let us wander under the watchful eye of some unsuspecting, new found friend. Together, we would uncover those special qualities that made a particular place so unique to us as children: the historic buildings and riverboats on the St. Croix River in Stillwater, Minnesota; the recreation hall at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota; the lecture room-style chairs and the echoing stone hallways of Wiley Hall on the West Bank of the University of Minnesota – we had many favorites. Thick with memory, those places are intimately connected with my experiences within them. To this day, I cannot pass through Wiley Hall without being overwhelmed with a deluge of memories, so strong are its tall, concrete walls associated with the music of Inti Illimani and Quilapayún playing under the banner of the Minnesota Committee for New Song. And while my memories are connected with time and place, they transcend both in that they have taken on greater significance and new meaning within my life with the passage of time.

64 Reminiscing with my siblings, I realize that we each took something different from these experiences – that those places, or our memories thereof, held something unique for each of us. And yet, we can agree that those shared experiences left an indelible mark, the impact of which is felt within our present lives as each of us, in our own way, carry those memories forward. As for myself, my present preoccupation with ethnomusicology and my interest in the New Song movement and the music of Latin America in general is a direct impact of my childhood experiences, as alluded to in the Preface of this thesis. And yet, as I grow and mature as an individual and academic, I gain a deeper appreciation for, and even find new meaning in the memories of my youth. And though I realize that my understanding of the significance of memory within my own life does not necessarily translate directly to my father and his understanding thereof, there is little question that his own memories play an ever present role in his life today.

CHAPTER FOUR MEMORY AND PLACE

The previous chapters have provided an overview of Leo’s life history and music, focusing on his work as a musician both in Ecuador and later in the United States with his spouse, Kathy, while highlighting some of the ways in which memory works in and through music. We have seen the centrality of music in Leo’s life as well as how music, as a vehicle for memory, and his use thereof allows for the formation of interpersonal connections, thus helping bridge differences and build community. Together, they can be understood as two distinct yet interrelated processes involving music and memory: one working through Leo’s life within the context of his lived experiences; the other working in Leo’s life concurrently with respect to time and place. With this in mind, we can begin to more fully understand the significance of music in Leo’s life, as an individual attempting to reconcile the disjuncture created by migration. Uprooted from everything with which he was familiar, Leo fashioned a unique place for himself within the Twin Cities through his music and work as a musician. And while his involvement with music in the United States signifies a clear continuity with respect to his work as a musician in Ecuador, the extent to which his experiences in Ecuador as a musician inform his sense of self and, subsequently, his sense of place remains yet to be addressed. The following pages, then, examine the means by which Leo re-fashions a sense of the familiar within the context of displacement, illuminating the role of music and memory in the transformation of place.

66 On Music and Place

Imbued with memory, place connotes a site defined as much by social interaction and personal experience as by its physical and geographic setting as suggested by Anthony Gidden’s (1990, 18) understanding of place as the “physical setting of social activity.” As such, it is neither an objectifiable truth, nor a static condition. Rather, it is a relative concept, subjective and malleable in nature. It is this understanding that leads Martin Stokes (1994) to conclude the following with respect to music and its relation to place: The musical event, from collective dances to the act of putting a cassette or CD into a machine, evokes and organizes collective memories and present experiences of place with an intensity, power and simplicity unmatched by any other social activity (3).

In so doing, it informs our sense of place, allowing for the negotiation and transformation thereof. Indeed, we have seen how music itself, through both its formal aspects and performance, facilitates this process as both a vehicle for memory and as a space wherein disparate and contesting memories are negotiated (see Chapter Three). And while music may delineate social boundaries in its construction of place, as noted by Stokes (1994, 3- 4), it also provides a means of “constructing trajectories,” or of bridging differences, thus allowing one to transcend the “hierarchies of place.” It is in this way that Leo, as an immigrant interpreting the traditional and folkloric music of the Andes region, is able to maintain a strong connection with his Ecuadorian roots while bridging his experiences with those of others, thus negotiating his sense of place relative to the social context in which he finds himself. As noted above, there remains yet another, albeit interrelated process by which music and memory inform place as evident by Leo’s life history, one involving the continual dialogue between present and past in what can be described as a series of hermeneutical arcs within the overall context of lived experience.

Arcs

A reflexive act, the recollection and narration of one’s own life history represents that aspect of the hermeneutical arc necessary for the successful appropriation of new experiences. As the apex of the model presented by Paul Ricouer (1981, see also Chapter One), the distance afforded by time, place and critical reflection allows for new understandings to unfold. Implicit in this statement is the discursive and subjective nature of meaning as derived from life histories with regards to both time and place. In the end, it is Leo’s narration of his life history, or rather his understanding of his own life history as arrived through distanciation, that provides the final all encompassing arc. In other words, it represents a self-contained reality, dynamic in its relation to time and place. Leo’s life history, then, provides a window through which multiple layers of meaning are revealed, from the content itself to the conscious and unconscious decisions guiding our dialogue. While providing a few intentionally broad-guiding questions at the outset, I allowed Leo complete direction as to the general course and shape of the formal interviews. As such, the narrative presented in Chapter Two reveals Leo’s own unique interpretation of his life and the significance of music therein. Thus, the organizational subheadings used in Chapter Two (Cuajara, Quito, New Song and Liberation Theology, Tiempo Nuevo and Jatari, Iowa and Minnesota) reflect not only editorial decisions made to provide narrative structure, but more importantly the way in which Leo himself discussed his life during the course of our interview. As alluded to above, the six major stages presented in Leo’s life history represent successive hermeneutical arcs anchored and demarcated by pivotal structural moments, here referred to as turnings (see Chapter One). At the macro level, Leo’s life history may be divided into two main arcs divided by one major turning: his migration from Ecuador to the United States. And while we may further subdivide the stages above, identifying a potentially infinite number of turnings as well as concentric arcs, it is with respect to Leo’s own interpretation that I chose to divide his life history as presented in Chapter Two. Of significance, however, is not so much the turnings themselves as are the

68 subsequent adaptations and understandings that occur within. It is here that the literature dealing with memory provides additional insight on Leo’s life history and the way in which he appropriated his experiences within each stage. As informed by both individual and collective memory, Halbwachs’ frameworks of memory serve as the foundation for approaching and understanding new experiences. As such, it is implicated as Gadamer’s (1986) pre-understanding as well as Mandelbaum’s dimensions (discussed below) in that process of appropriation represented by the hermeneutical arc . Aptly defining experience as “the history of the individual’s encounter with the world of symbols in which he finds himself,” Rice’s (1994, 8) notion of history as a relative construct dependent on time and place reflects Halbwach’s understanding of memory as a continual dialogue between both present and past, the individual and society. As discussed in Chapter One, the hermeneutical arc represents a move from pre-understanding to new understandings through a dialectic process involving the synthesis or appropriation of new experiences within the context of an individual’s overall “encounter with the world of symbols.” Implicit in this process is the notion that knowledge and understanding exist within a finite yet expandable framework situated at the juncture between the individual and society. As new understandings are reached and incorporated into an individual’s existing frameworks of memory, they form an elision as the basis for approaching the next experience. In this sense, each successive arc builds upon those previous, expanding an individual’s understanding of the world with the passage of time. An ontological concern, then, hermeneutics suggests an intimate way of being in the world that allows for the continual negotiation of one’s place therein, as discussed below.

Dimensions

Leo fashioned a familiar sense of place within each arc that was fundamentally rooted in his experiences as a musician working within the context of Nueva Cancion. With each successive arc, he further defined and expanded his understanding of himself relative to his surroundings, continually growing as a musician in his commitment to social justice and cultural advocacy. Most significant to Leo’s perception and

69 understanding of the world in general, I argue that it is this aspect – his awareness of social issues – that allowed him to re-fashion a sense of the familiar within the different contexts presented by each arc. In this sense, his unique disposition represents what Mandelbaum (1973) refers to as dimensions. Providing a sense of cohesion and order to an otherwise disordered past, Leo’s commitment to social issues through his music appears as a consistent thread throughout, from his involvement with Nueva Canción in Ecuador to his political and educational work within the United States. As seen in Chapter Two, Leo’s exposure to the student demonstrations that occurred across from his doorstep at La Universidad Central and to the subsequent student/military confrontations engendered in him a critical understanding of the world with respect to socio-economic and socio-political issues. This disposition was further informed by his encounter and involvement with both Liberation Theology and Nueva Canción. It was during these formative years, while performing and making field excursions with Tiempo Nuevo and Jatari, that Leo cultivated those dimensions that would inform his perception of the world (his particular world view) and his respective place therein throughout the course of his life. Those dimensions as well as his awareness of them manifest themselves most prominently through Leo’s discussion and understanding of the nature of his work as it relates to Nueva Canción. Situating himself within the context of the New Song movement and Liberation theology from the onset of our interviews, Leo reveals a critical awareness of their significance with respect to the formation of his particular world view as well as of his respective place within these broader historical processes. The story that unfolds through Leo’s narration takes on an almost linear progression as he grows or matures with each successive arc as a musician within the social and cultural process initially defined by the pioneers of the New Song movement. Within the United States, he adapts and applies his experiences with Nueva Canción through his involvement with the Minnesota Committee for New Song as well as through his work within the community with his spouse, Kathy. In this way, Leo embeds his memory of those past experiences within his current experience of place, thus re-locating himself through the fusion of past and present. The relative impact of the New Song movement on Leo’s life is most clearly articulated by Leo himself:

Mi formación, lo que yo hago obedece a todos estos fenómenos que se dieron ante mi vida, ante mi crecimiento, no es que yo hago lo que hago es porque se me ilumino o soy un experto en esta área, gracias a que gente como Violeta Parra, Victor Jara y otros mas en la área del cono sur, puedo mencionar nombres como Daniel Viglietti, Atahualpa Yupanqui, son figuras quien influenciaron en cada una de nuestras vidas, no solo la mía si no de muchos de lo que hacemos en este tipo de trabajo. Y nos denominamos Trabajadores Culturales.

[My formation, what I do, owes a great deal to these phenomena that came before me, before my maturation. It is not that I do what I do simply because I am an expert in this area. It is thanks to people like Violeta Parra, Victor Jara, and others in the area of the Southern Cone. I can mention names like Daniel Viglietti, Atahualpa Yupanqui. They are figures who influenced each and every one of our lives—not just mine, but of many of us in this line of work. We call ourselves Cultural Workers.]

Firmly rooting his work within the context of Nueva Canción, Leo identifies himself not so much as a musician, but as an individual working within a much broader cultural and political process involving music. For Leo, music is a medium through which to both engage and express his particular understanding of the world. As such, music exists not so much as an external form of expression independent of the individuals and community from which it is produced, but as an integral aspect of life as lived. An expressive idiom arising out of and responding to the particular needs of a given community and/or individual, music is both dynamic and intimate in nature. This level of intimacy is implied in Leo’s approach to music as an experiential phenomenon, noted below:

I am an empirical musician who has learned by watching and listening; this is my only mechanism for learning – being immersed in the culture. This is how I absorbed my knowledge and understanding.

A form of appropriation, Leo “absorbs” the various music traditions, incorporating them into his repertoire as necessitated by the present context. In this way, the music is made personally meaningful as it speaks to both his own experiences and the particular situation at hand. This understanding is also supported by Leo’s own discussion of the nature of Nueva Canción as a relative process responding to conditions sensitive to time and place. In this sense, Leo’s work within the United States under the

71 New Song banner reflects a unique form of appropriation, as his work and music adapted to fit the changing contexts represented by each arc. In other words, his understanding of his work and purpose as a musician with respect to Nueva Canción broadens with time, continually drawing upon and encompassing his experiences both in Ecuador and the United States. As such, Leo’s sense of self and place within the world encompasses the gamut of his life experiences. Thus it is possible for Leo to perceive himself simultaneously as an Ecuadorian, as part of a broader Latin American community in diaspora, a resident of Minnesota, and a United States citizen. Consistent within each, however, is his understanding of his purpose and place as a musician working within the ideological framework defined by Nueva Canción. It is ultimately through his music, then that Leo finds, or rather fashions, a familiar place within each new context presented by the arcs. In this way, music serves as much more than an expressive medium for Leo, it becomes, in a very literal sense, a way of experiencing and understanding the world that informs his sense of place therein. In the end, Leo’s life history suggests not only a more intimate way of knowing music, but of also knowing through music that reveals the potential agency of music and music making in the negotiation of place as enabled through the work of memory. As a mode of being, music allows for the transformation of present realities, mediating the gap between the individual and society, past and present. In this way, it provides a unique means of building community, re-fashioning, in a sense, an individual’s experience of place.

EPILOGUE

July, 2004—Quito, Ecuador

Seated arm in arm, a glass of wine in hand, my parents listen contently to the finished product of their latest recording as evening descends upon the city of Quito. Now in the final days of our summer sojourn in Ecuador, my parents exude a sense of pride, having just completed the project they began nearly one year ago in the makeshift studio of our home in Minnesota. Visibly exhausted, my parents allow the sound of their creation wash away the stress of the past few hectic weeks. Their first recording in over ten years, the songs contained in this album reflect the gamut of their repertoire, drawing heavily on the traditional songs and melodies of Ecuador and the greater Andes region. As I look out over the city, now a series of lights outlining the contour of the valley below, I take in the significance of the project and its timely completion here among the mountains and people whose memory inspired its creation. It is little wonder, I think to myself, that my parents chose to entitle the album Memorias Vivas, or living memories.

* * *

In many respects, Memorias Vivas reflects precisely what this thesis attempts to convey, the notion that memory, our traditions and sense of who we are as individuals and as a collective entity be it at the level of the family, the nation state, or otherwise, is dynamic. Passed on through such expressive cultural forms as music, they are forever changing, adapting through and within each successive generation, thus taking on new meaning and significance in new contexts. It is precisely when those memories cease to hold meaning

73 within our daily lives, or when we consciously, or unconsciously, choose or are otherwise forced to suppress them that they are forgotten, if not entirely lost. Perhaps it is for this reason that Leo holds so tenaciously and with such passion the repertoire of his formative years, those songs which in my own mind are just as inseparable from his identity as the dark-brown hue of his skin or the distinct dialect of his native tongue. They are the songs of his people, of their struggles, hopes and aspirations as well as of his youth. Rather than subside into the distant past, they continue to grow, gaining strength and meaning with each subsequent performance and the passage of time. In this sense, the music and the memories it conveys are very much alive.

APPENDIX A

Leo and Kathy Lara, Artistic Resume

75 76 77 78

APPENDIX B

Informed Consent

79 80

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Currently pursuing graduate studies in ethnomusicology at The Florida State University, Francisco Lara earned his Bachelors of Music degree in music theory from Northwestern University in 2001. His primary academic interests are in the music and culture of Latin America as well as with broader issues concerning music and identity. Francisco currently resides in Tallahassee, Florida.