Description
The prolonged exile in Rome of the Chilean new song group Inti-illimani (1967-), slowly but intensely linked the band with the Italian Mediterranean culture, with which Chileans had had little direct contact. After feeding their curiosity with these new sonorities, instruments and genres, the band's director, Horacio Salinas, began to compose Mediterranean-inspired instrumental music to incorporate into Inti-illimani's concerts and discography. He and the group did so by combining their Latin American instrumental and sung repertoire, strongly influenced by Andean music, with the new Mediterranean repertoire, using the first and/or last track of three of their albums to place it. Thus, they seemed to leave their native music framed by the sounds of exile. This happens in the albums Palimsesto (1981), Imaginación (1984), and Andadas (1993). With this last one they entered the category of World Music on Billboard. In Europe, Inti-illimani had emphasized the composition of instrumental music to overcome language barriers. Pointing out that they were making “folklore from an imaginary country” the group used their own Andean instruments to perform and record their new Mediterranean repertoire, with the guitar as a common element. They did not seek mixtures, but rather displacements, as Violeta Parra did in the mid 1960’s. In this paper, I focus on the following three problems: the processes of adaptation of Mediterranean music to the Andean ensemble proposed by Inti-illimani; the discourses that legitimize their procedures of elaboration of folklore; and the reception and destiny in Italy and Chile of this new Mediterranean-Andean repertoire.
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