Origins: El Pueblo Unido

Subject: ADD: El Pueblo Unido
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 May 17 - 03:33 AM

I thought we ought to have this. Wikipedia says it is one of the most internationally renowned songs of the Nueva cancion chilena (New Chilean Song) movement.

MIA: Art: Music: Lyrics: El pueblo unido jamás será vencido

El pueblo unido jamás será vencido

El pueblo unido jamás será vencido, el pueblo unido jamás será vencido...	The people united will never be defeated...
De pie, cantar que vamos a triunfar. Avanzan ya banderas de unidad. Y tú vendrás marchando junto a mí y así verás tu canto y tu bandera florecer, la luz de un rojo amanecer anuncia ya la vida que vendrá. De pie, luchar el pueblo va a triunfar. Será mejor la vida que vendrá a conquistar nuestra felicidad y en un clamor mil voces de combate se alzarán dirán canción de libertad con decisión la patria vencerá. Y ahora el pueblo que se alza en la lucha con voz de gigante gritando: ¡adelante!	Arise, sing We are going to win. Flags of unity are now advancing. And you will come marching together with me, and so you'll see your song and your flag blossom. The light of a red dawn already announces the life to come. Arise, fight the people are going to win. The life to come will be better. To conquer our happiness. and a clamor of a thousand fighting voices will rise, speaking a song of freedom. With determination the fatherland will win. And now the people, who are rising in struggle with a giant voice crying out: Forward!
El pueblo unido jamás será vencido, el pueblo unido jamás será vencido...	The people united will never be defeated, The people united will never be defeated...
La patria está forjando la unidad de norte a sur se movilizará desde el salar ardiente y mineral al bosque austral unidos en la lucha y el trabajo irán la patria cubrirán, su paso ya anuncia el porvenir. De pie, cantar el pueblo va a triunfar millones ya, imponen la verdad, de acero son ardiente batallón sus manos van llevando la justicia y la razón mujer con fuego y con valor ya estás aquí junto al trabajador.	The fatherland is forging unity, from north to south they're mobilizing. From the salt mines burning and mineral to the southern forests. united in struggle and labor they go covering the fatherland. Their steps already Announce the future. Arise, sing the people are going to win millions now are imposing the truth Their steel battalions are on fire, taking in their hands justice and reason. Woman with fire and courage is already here Along side the worker.

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Lyrics/Music: Quilapayún, Sergio Ortega, 1970 (Chile)
Translated for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor

Recording by Quilapayun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWlkWPXfvXc

And by Inti Illimani: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F_9FEx7ymg

Subject: RE: Origins: El Pueblo Unido
From: Monique
Date: 20 May 17 - 03:46 AM

Since your post is blank, we can't know what you meant to say or what you were asking for but there's a long entry about it on Wiki -the Spanish entry is muuuuuch more documented. The song was composed by Sergio Ortega and written by him and the Quilapayún (Cf. there) in 1973.

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You caught me, Monique. My post was blank. I was tricking Mudcat into accepting special formatting...
I'd like to know more about the song, if you have anything. Thanks. -Joe-

Subject: RE: Origins: El Pueblo Unido
From: Jack Campin
Date: 20 May 17 - 05:03 AM

By sheer coincidence, I bought Marc-Andre Hamelin's recording of Frederic Rzewski's piano variations on this song yesterday - "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" (Hyperion CDA67077, 1999) from the Christian Aid book sale in Edinburgh. It's probably Rzewski's best known piece. I heard him playing here a few years ago; phemomenal performer and I think he's still at it. (The sleeve notes don't add much to what Joe said; apparently Ortega built his song around a street chant he heard in early 1973).

Subject: RE: Origins: El Pueblo Unido
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 20 May 17 - 06:15 AM

"One day in June, 1973, three months before the bombing by Pinochet's military coup, I was walking through the plaza in front of the Palace of Finance in Santiago, Chile, and saw a street singer shouting, "The people united will never be defeated" - a well known Chilean chant for social change. I couldn't stop, and continued across the square, but his incessant chanting followed me and stuck in my mind.

On the following Sunday, after the broadcast of the show "Chile Says No to Civil War", which I directed for Channel 9, we went with a few artists to eat at my house outside Santiago. Upon arrival I sat down at my piano and thought about the experience in the plaza and the events at large. When I reproduced the chant of the people in my head, the chant that could not be restrained, the entire melody exploded from me: I saw it complete and played it in its entirety at once. The text unfurled itself quickly and fell, like falling rocks, upon the melody. In their enthusiasm some of my guests made suggestions that were too rational for the situation I was composing in. Out of courtesy I pretended to accept, but arranged myself to leave the text in its symptomatic landscape.

The song was performed in public two days later by the group Quilapayun in a heavily attended concert in the Alameda.
--Sergio Ortega, on El Pueble Unido"
http://unionsong.com/u443.html 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't know which version it is but I like this on YT. Lots of participation from the audience.
https://youtu.be/Hhhk4oj6nWk 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Rzewski is a great listen, though I can't take the whole album at one sitting.

Subject: RE: Origins: El Pueblo Unido
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 May 17 - 06:36 AM

Here's a recording of Rzewski. I like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UPHiYoP0CY

Subject: RE: Origins: El Pueblo Unido
From: Monique
Date: 20 May 17 - 07:06 AM

According to Spanish Wiki "The title of the song would be inspired by a sentence that the Colombian political leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán said in a speech in the 1940's and being spread by manifestants from the Unidad Popular during the President Salvador Allende's socialist government in the early 70's. According to Sergio Ortega Alvarado himself, he composed the song first inspired by a young man who shouted the famous sentence while he (Ortega) was heading home in Santiago de Chile in June 1973"

The first recording is said to be live from June/30 1973 (37:49). Here is the video: from left to right, Hugo Lagos, Rodolfo Parada, Willy Oddó, Eduardo Carrasco, Rubén Escudero, Hernán Gómez and Carlos Quezada -all still members of the group but Willy († 1991/11/07) and Rodolfo Parada who founded another group.

I have no first hand piece of information except for "It's an idealistic song."

Subject: RE: Origins: El Pueblo Unido
From: bradfordian
Date: 20 May 17 - 10:17 AM

Quilapayun

Subject: RE: Origins: El Pueblo Unido
From: Monique
Date: 20 May 17 - 10:25 AM

This one is Parada's band.

Subject: RE: Origins: El Pueblo Unido
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Jun 17 - 05:13 PM

Sergio Ortega is referenced, with his songs, in La canción en el sombrero, the volume of memoirs published, in his native Spanish, by Horacio Salinas, the musical director and lead guitarist for Inti-Illimani.
Since the "divorce", as they are calling the legal and highly acrimonious break-up of the group, Salinas fulfills the same functions
for the newer entity, Inti-Illimani Històrico.

While Ortega's anthemic song is most closely identified, it seems, with Quilapayún,
Ortega is essential to an entire generation of Chileños, be they listeners or professional musicians.
Salinas acknowledges "El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido", as he must, given that his book is more than anything an account of Inti-Illimani's history of writing, recording, and performing music, with only carefully prepared and discreet remarks about the band apart from the music.

Salinas does volunteer a few interesting things.
Sergio Ortega, when the shocking assassination of Allende and the hostile takeover of the Chilean government happened, was...where? Had he already left the country? If I read right, he was already in Europe.
Everyone knows, of Inti-Illimani, that they were attending an event in Italy when the worst happened, and that thus the band was exiled from their native Chile for the next sixteen years. (Although they did perform in South America, in other countries. And Jorge Coulon, anticipating their return, would find a place to live in Argentina.)

Jorge Coulon's brother, Marcelo Coulon, was not at this point a fulltime Inti-Illimani member, although back in Chile Marcelo had, years earlier, subbed for Jorge during one recording session.
When Pinochet rose to power in Chile, Marcelo himself was in Europe, although not with Inti Illimani.

Salinas has some first-hand reminiscences of Inti-Illimani working with Ortega in exile.
Ortega was an artist of strong and fixed opinions, and band members who disagreed with him would find themselves up against a confrontational composer.

Subject: RE: Origins: El Pueblo Unido
From: Monique
Date: 30 Jun 17 - 06:22 PM

There, it reads that "after Pinochet's coup he took refuge in Panama then went to France with Volodia Teitelboim's help. He was fraternally welcome first in Colombes and Nanterre, then in Pantin where he was the head of the National School of Music from 1981 till this* start of the school year" (*Sept. 2003, when he passed away)