Rivera Volosky, Ignacio. 2019. Performing Exile, Music and Politics: El Sueno˜ Existe Festival in Wales and the Legacy of V´ıctor Jara. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis] https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/26282/ The version presented here may differ from the published, performed or presented work. Please go to the persistent GRO record above for more information. If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Goldsmiths, University of London via the following email address: [email protected]. The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. For more information, please contact the GRO team: [email protected] Performing Exile, Music and Politics: El Sueño Existe Festival in Wales and the Legacy of Víctor Jara Ignacio Rivera Volosky Goldsmiths, University of London Thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. in Sociology January 2019 1 I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Ignacio Rivera Volosky 2 Acknowledgments Thanks to my supervisors, Prof Vikki Bell and Dr Monica Sassatelli. Thanks for your support, interest and feedback that I received during the four years of my PhD. Thanks for your guidance, for sharing your knowledge, and your critical analysis of my work. Thanks to Goldsmiths Sociology academics, Prof Les Back and Dr Michaela Benson, for the feedback and advice in my upgrade examination. Thanks to Dr Monica Greco and Dr Alberto Toscano for your comments in departmental presentations. Thanks to Dr Francisco Carballo, from Politics Department at Goldsmiths, for your interest in Victor Jara and Latin American politics and culture. Thanks to all the academics that gave a space to present and feedback in different conferences and seminars that I have over the last years, including Dr Henry Stobart, Dr Cecilia Sosa and Prof Cathy McIlwaine. Thanks to Chilean Academics, Dr Marisol Facuse and Rodrigo Torres, for your feedback in sociology of arts and Chilean music. Thanks to Roberta Bacic for your interest in memory ad arts. Thanks to all the participants of the research and people involved in El Sueño Existe festival, including Tony Corden, Maggie Day, Keith Jackson, Hugo Alarcón, Silvia Balducci, Malcolm Boorer, John Cantor, Carlos Cruz, Ethel Cure, Adam Feinstein, Pedro Fuentes, Peter Godfrey, Alejandro González, Polly Henderson, Tim Hollings, Jorge Morales, Pablo Navarrete, Roberto Navarrete, Rachel Pantin, Patricia Pons, Alejandro Reyes, Paulina Reyes, Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes, Maureen Russell, Apolo Santana, Cristina Solana, Theresa Webb, Adrian Weird, Allan Wynne Jones. Thanks to my colleagues and academics in the Goldsmiths PhD Migration Reading Group, the Goldsmiths Latin American Hub, and the NYLON research seminar. Thanks to friends and colleagues Valentina Alvarez, Miranda Armstrong, Macarena Bonhomme, Gonzalo Bustos, Katia Chornik, Alice Corble, Bernardita Battle, Adam Carter, Joselyne Contreras, Vicki Dabrowski, Martin Farias, Rosario Fernández, Sian Gouldstone, Laura Henneke, Cristián Hernández, Marta Hernández, Luis Herrera, Vanessa Hughes, Eileen Karmy, Felipe Lagos, Chien Lee, Gabriela López, Ashjan Lulu, Gauthier Marchais, Angelo Martins Jr, Jacky Mendez, Felipe Palma, Chloe Peacock, Ming-Te Peng, Jess Perriam, Tomas Peters, Peter Rees, Louise Rondel, Jorge Saavedra, Kaoru Takahashi, Lieta Vivaldi, Sarah Walker. I would like to give special thanks to Paz Concha for reading my chapters and your feedback. Thanks to all academic staff from Goldsmiths for your support, in special Bridget Ward. Thanks to Deborah Bowen for proofreading my work. 3 Thanks to my family: my parents, siblings and grandmother. Special thanks to my mother, Ana, because of your unconditional support, and to my father Juan, for your enthusiasm in Victor Jara, music and politics. This thesis is for my wife Daniela. Thanks for being with me, for reading and giving feedback of my thesis, for going to the festivals and help me in the ethnography, for singing together, to support me in everyday life. This thesis is dedicated to: Loreley Volosky Lawner (1955-2015) 4 Abstract This thesis examines how diasporic, musical and political identities are performed, contested and reaffirmed in El Sueño Existe, a festival of Latin American music and politics that takes place every two years in Machynlleth, Wales. Set up in 2005, this festival commemorates the legacy of Chilean artist Víctor Jara and the movement ‘New Chilean Song’ of which he was a part. Victor Jara was a musician and theatre director who was killed a few days after the Chilean Military Coup in September 1973, and who since his death has become a symbol of international solidarity and the defence of human rights (McSherry 2015b). The methodology is based on a performance epistemology (Taylor 2003) and included my own participation in the festival as a member of the public, a member of the organisation, and a musician. In addition, I have conducted interviews with several festival-goers, focusing on their biographies, experiences and opinions of Victor Jara, New Chilean Song and the festival. Based on discussions of cultural performance (Turner 1987; Taylor 2007), the sociology of music (Frith 1996b; DeNora 2000) and theory of performativity (Bell 1999; Fortier 1999), I suggest that the festival is a space that simultaneously acts to both suspend and to create normativity. I argue that El Sueño Existe festival is a liminal space for Chilean exiles, international musicians and political activists which ultimately works to reaffirm political, musical and diasporic identities, through the re-enactment of a set of repertoires that promote a sense of belonging and identification. The process of reaffirmation is not exclusively created by the means of breaking normativity in a symbolic domain; it is also constructed through the reproduction of hierarchies and discourses that create membership among the people who belong to the community. 5 Contents Acknowledgments ................................................................................................ 3 List of Figures ...................................................................................................... 8 Preface ................................................................................................................ 9 Chapter 1. Introduction ....................................................................................... 12 1.1 Contextualising Víctor Jara, El Sueño Existe, and motivations for the research .... 12 1.2 Theoretical framework: liminality, performativity and music performance ......... 19 1.3 Research questions ............................................................................................. 22 1.4 Debates in cultural, migration, festival and music studies ................................... 23 1.5 Chapter outlines ................................................................................................. 27 Chapter 2. Conceptual Framework ....................................................................... 32 2.1 Liminality, cultural performance and festivals .................................................... 35 2.2 Music performance: music values, technologies of the self and communities ..... 43 2.3 Performativity as citationality and belonging ..................................................... 55 2.4 Conclusions: festival as space of belonging and critique ..................................... 64 Chapter 3. Methodology ..................................................................................... 69 3.1 Performance as epistemology............................................................................. 70 3.2 My personal journey in the research ................................................................... 75 3.3 Performative ethnography and interviews .......................................................... 80 3.4 Reflexivity: My family history, music and politics ................................................ 84 3.5 Cultural translation as methodological challenge ............................................... 89 3.6 Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 93 Chapter 4. The Life, Death and Dream of Víctor Jara............................................. 95 4.1 Víctor Jara’s life................................................................................................... 97 4.2 Víctor Jara’s death ............................................................................................ 109 4.3 Víctor Jara’s dream in Wales .............................................................................. 117 4.4 Conclusions .......................................................................................................130 Chapter 5. Chilean Exiles and the Liminal Experience of the Festival ................... 133 5.1 Temporal liminality: revival and nostalgia .......................................................... 135 5.2 Social liminality: Communitas and festive catharsis ........................................... 145 5.3 Political liminality: reinforcing ethos and ways of living .................................... 156 5.4 Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 162 Chapter 6. The music of Jara in everyday life ...................................................... 165 6 6.1 Temporalities ..................................................................................................