Demonstrators in Chile are looking to the past for their soundtrack

AS HIS PRESIDENTIAL campaign reached its climax in 1970, Salvador Allende appeared at the Teatro Caupolicán in Santiago beneath a banner that read: “There is no revolution without music.” He was flanked by some of the revered performers who in the preceding years had thrust Chile’s music onto the world stage. Among them was Víctor Jara, a singer who would be tortured and murdered soon after the coup that ended Allende’s socialist administration in 1973. The ensuing dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet lasted 17 years; but Jara’s music, and that of other artists who were censored, exiled or killed, lived on.