Tiempo Nuevo
| Tiempo Nuevo | |
|---|---|
| General information | |
| Genre (s) | Nueva canción |
| founding | 1965 |
| Website | www.tiemponuevo.de |
| Current occupation | |
| Roberto Rivera | |
| Luis Gonzales | |
Guitar, strings, vocals |
David Sandoval |
| Carlos Mejía | |
Tiempo Nuevo (Eng .: New Time) is a music group from Chile . She belonged to the movement of the Nueva canción (translated: New Song) co-founded by Violeta Parra and her brother Nicanor Parra in Chile .
history
Tiempo Nuevo until 1973
Tiempo Nuevo first formed in Valparaiso in 1965 as a group of the Música Popular. The final name of the group became more popular from 1969 when the musicians began to work professionally. Tiempo Nuevo played a leading role in the election campaign of Salvador Allende and the United Left ( Unidad Popular ) for the presidency of Chile, as well as in the cultural activities during the time of the Unidad Popular government. The group came from the immediate environment of the Communist Party of Chile , which was a member of the Unidad Popular, and its chairman Luis Corvalán .
Four long-playing records from the time of the Unidad Popular summarize this work by Tiempo Nuevo in Chile. The concerts during the time of the United Left government are impossible to oversee. There was also a large number of appearances at mass events, including on radio and television. At that time there were extensive tours through many Latin American countries and Europe. Tiempo Nuevo has composed compositions for Chilean and Latin American films.
With the coup , all conditions changed for Tiempo Nuevo as well. After the killing of Salvador Allende , a military junta took power and made Pinochet its chairman. The songs of the Nueva Canción and their performers were considered by the military to be enemies of their politics, so it was one of the first measures of the junta to ban the typical instruments of the Nueva canción such as quena , zampoña , the charango or the cajón . Texts in indigenous languages were also persecuted. Even so, the movement stayed alive and the groups remembered.
Tiempo Nuevo, who came back from a tour, could still be warned at the airport in Santiago. Without returning home, the escape led directly over the Andes to the neighboring country. General Augusto Pinochet's secret police searched for the members of the popular group for weeks. The first stop of the long exile was Argentina, where in Buenos Aires the LP Por Chile! Venceremos was produced. Like many other left-wing artists in Chile, Tiempo Nuevo had to remain in political exile for a long time.
The way into exile and life in the GDR
The group continued on to Europe and the German Democratic Republic . The former dentist Roberto Rivera, chairman of the Society for Friendship between the Chilean Republic and the GDR before 1973, found a new home in Germany. Today he is the only founding member of the group who is still active with Tiempo Nuevo. The first time after his happy escape from Chile in 1973 he spent in Chemnitz (Karl-Marx-Stadt), where he also met his current partner, the actress Cornelia Schmaus . The family later moved to Berlin, where they still live today.
During the years of exile, Tiempo Nuevo created more than 100 compositions that deal with the hopes of Latin America, feelings for the homeland of Chile and life far from home. Tiempo Nuevo has documented his artistic work on several long-playing records that were edited in the Netherlands, Switzerland, the Federal Republic of Germany and France. In Chile itself, cassettes with the group's titles were distributed under the name "Ahora" during the dictatorship . Ahora Chileno ahora / Just now Chileans, right now is also the title of a song by the group from 1983 and first published on a joint sampler with other Chilean groups such as Inti-Illimani .
Tiempo Nuevo was an integral part of the Chilean exile community in the GDR. According to estimates, more than 2,000 Chileans sought refuge in the German Democratic Republic. A series of events initiated and designed by the group has been very successful in Berlin to this day: the Peña . With the Peña, Tiempo Nuevo ties in with an artistic form of encounter that has a great tradition in Chile and other Latin American countries. In Berlin, the meeting of cultures is the focus of this event. The original meaning of the word is: rock, or Stammtisch. Peñas are widespread throughout Chile and, due to the exile of democratically-minded Chileans, also outside of Chile - Peñas are generally associated with events of the democratic and left-wing movement. In Berlin they initially took place in Weißensee, then they moved to Berlin-Marzahn to the club of the mid-twenties (today Springpfuhlhaus eV); Such events still take place today in the Wabe in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg.
The group performed several times at the Festival of Political Song in East Berlin and almost constantly undertook smaller tours through the GDR. The concerts usually took place in front of hundreds of spectators in youth camps and companies. The group also had a stable environment in the Federal Republic of Germany. Multiple appearances at events of the peace movement in the late seventies and early eighties as well as at the alternative book fair in Frankfurt / Main are examples of this.
Tiempo Nuevo played at numerous festivals during the years of exile, and took part in radio and television broadcasts. A large number of compositions for theater productions originate from Tiempo Nuevo, including for Pablo Neruda's Splendor and Misery of Joaquín Murieta at the Chemnitz City Theater and for Remembrance of the Fire at the Berlin Volksbühne, as well as the music for a number of feature and television films.
Tours have taken Tiempo Nuevo to many European countries, to Mozambique and Argentina. At the time of the plebiscite against the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, the group appeared in their Chilean homeland for the first time after 15 years of exile. Of the founding members of the group Tiempo Nuevo, Roberto Rivera is the only one who is the musical head of the group. The vast majority of the texts, compositions and arrangements come from his pen.
Tiempo Nuevo after the end of the dictatorship in Chile
In the 1980s there were still secret trips to Latin America. First appearances took Roberto Rivera, Alejandro Quintana and the group to Argentina. The program Rumbo a la Libertad ("Freedom") with texts by Pablo Neruda was originally created for this purpose. The fact that, after 15 years of exile, the group preferred to use texts by the greatest poet of this nation when they returned to the country that had liberated itself from the military dictatorship was a great success. The fiery words of the Nobel Prize winner, in conjunction with the group's songs, became a signal for the “NO” at the plebiscite.
In 1989 the record production Rumbo a la Libertad was started ... - I declare my love for you ... , which was published in Germany by the Gutenberg Book Guild in Frankfurt am Main.
Tiempo Nuevo today
Even today, the euphoria and enthusiasm of the first time after returning to Chile can be found in parts of these programs. This is particularly evident in current projects such as the “Canto General - Pablo Neruda” program, which Tiempo Nuevo is performing together with Alejandro Quintana. The actor and director accompanies the group's music with his recitative-musical texts.
Over the years, Tiempo Nuevo has repeatedly added, supplemented and changed the programs. In today's versions, they are an extract of the entire previous work of the group and not only reflect the critical character of the American hymns of Canto General ( The Great Song ), but range from Neruda's detailed, animistic and elemental odes to the last poems with which he had groped his way up to the turn of the millennium. The songs of the group paraphrase, illustrate and comment on his lyrical work and thus form the musical soul of a program that spans an arc that can almost be called dramatic between the spoken word, “European” harmonies and Latin American timbres and rhythms.
Tiempo Nuevo often performs with other artists. The group works closely with Alejandro Quintana again and again. Working with actress Cornelia Schmaus has also been an integral part of group work for years. For several years there have been joint appearances with poems from different times and countries in special arrangements.
Tiempo Nuevo's music continues the well-known traditions of Chilean and Latin American folklore - Vals, Cumbia, Corrido, Guaracha, etc. Tiempo Nuevo looked for and found a profile of its own and today goes on tour regularly through Germany, Europe and Latin America.
Current programs of the group
- Peña on tour
- Pablo Neruda - Canto General
- Eduardo Galeano: memories of the fire
- The olives flourish - the war is over
- Songs from Latin America
Literature and film
- Albrecht Moreno: Violeta Parra and "La Nueva Canción Chilena". In: Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 5 (1986).
- Jan Fairly: The guitar is a weapon, the song is a bullet. Nueva canción . In: Simon Broughton et al. (Ed.): World music. Rough Guide . JB Metzler, Stuttgart and Weimar 2000.
- Dean Reed : El Cantor .