Víctor Jara
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Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez (born September 28, 1932 in Lonquén near Santiago de Chile , † September 16, 1973 in Santiago de Chile) was a Chilean singer, musician and theater director . He was arrested on September 12, 1973 and murdered on September 16, 1973 with at least 44 shots by soldiers of the military who carried out the coup on September 11, 1973 .
biography
Childhood and youth
Víctor Jara was born in Lonquén, a small town near Santiago de Chile. His parents were farm laborers - his father, Manuel, worked as a simple laborer, while his mother, Amanda, did a variety of jobs to support the family.
The father was an alcoholic and frequently abused his wife. After he left the family, the mother took care of Victor and his four siblings alone. She sang and played the guitar herself , which she passed on to her son as well as her love for traditional Chilean folklore . When he was 15 years old, his mother died. Jara broke off his training as an accountant and began studying theology , which he finished after two years without a degree.
Having lost his faith in religion, he returned to Lonquén without a job and began studying Chilean folklore with a few friends with whom he soon afterwards founded the group Cuncumén . He developed an interest in theater and began studying acting in the School of Theater in the Universidad de Chile . During this time, Víctor Jara took part in countless theater productions (e.g. Carmina Burana ). The meeting with Violeta Parra was decisive for him. She was a gifted singer and artist, admired traditional Chilean folklore and owned a small café in Santiago. Víctor helped her in this cafe and began to sing more and more. The decisive factor for the music was the experiences of an Eastern Bloc tour with his Santiaguiner theater group. As part of the show, one of the actresses was supposed to sing; but when she fell ill, Jara jumped in with his guitar and was pelted with flowers by the Russian audience. This ultimately motivated him to write his first song, El cigarrito , in a Moscow hotel room .
During this time he became involved in Chilean politics for the first time.
Folk singer
In 1966 his first record, Víctor Jara, was released . In the same year the single La beata was released , in which Jara intoned a Chilean folk song. The song is rather humorous and is about a nun who falls in love with a priest. Jara's interpretation led to a scandal, so that the song was no longer played on the radio and the single disappeared from the Chilean record stores. As a result, more and more visitors flocked to Violeta Parra's café to hear Jara's interpretation of La beata .
In the following years he continued to work as a director, but devoted more and more time to his songs and his political activities. From 1970 he left the theater and concentrated on music. Víctor Jara's songs show the common people, their lives and their problems in a society with stark social disparities. Many of his texts deal with social injustice or political scandals.
Víctor Jara is one of the great representatives of the " Nueva Canción " (New Song) in South America. This was a great revolutionary movement in South America in which many artists and scholars participated.
Víctor Jara's political ideas were an important part of his plays. Like many progressive singers in South America, he was a staunch communist and head of the arts department of the Communist Party of Chile . Together with other singers, he gave concerts for the benefit of Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular , a collective movement of left-wing parties.
Víctor Jara was arrested on September 12, 1973 in the courtyard of the Technical University, where he worked as a lecturer, from the entourage of the coup led by Augusto Pinochet against Allende ; Due to the unsafe situation during the coup, he and some colleagues had spent the night in the university rooms because they had considered it too dangerous to go home.
Arrest and death
Jara was taken to the Estadio Chile with many lecturers and students , where he was recognized by an officer and, like many of his fellow sufferers, tortured . Under these circumstances, his last poem was written (actually without a title, but mostly named after the opening line Somos cinco mil , "We are five thousand"). Later, his torturers broke his hands so that he could no longer play the guitar. Many believed that his hands were chopped off, but his wife, Joan Jara, who later saw the body, said no. In response to the soldiers' malicious request that he should sing if he was a singer, Víctor Jara raised his voice again to sing the song of the Unidad Popular Venceremos - “We will win”. He was then beaten up and eventually killed with a machine gun. After a few days, his wife was informed that his body had been found and it was handed over to her. She left Chile soon after. Foreign journalists helped her smuggle hidden photographs of her husband into Europe. She returned to Chile in the late 1980s, where she founded the Victor Jara Foundation in 1994 .
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In September 2003, on the 30th anniversary of his assassination, the Estadio Chile was officially renamed Estadio Víctor Jara .
On December 9, 2004, more than 31 years after Jara's murder, judge Juan Carlos Urrutia brought charges against retired Colonel Mario Manríquez Bravo in Santiago. Manríquez was said to have been the highest ranking officer in the Estadio Chile during the murder of Jara and was therefore responsible for the murder under his command.
Jara's remains were exhumed in June 2009. According to the forensic medical report from late November, they had numerous broken bones and 44 gunshot wounds. In December, Jara's remains were transferred to the Santiago Central Cemetery. Thousands of Chileans marched past the coffin, including President Michelle Bachelet.
In December 2012, the Chilean judiciary ordered the arrest of eight suspected ex-military officers in order to finally clarify the death of Víctor Jara. The judge Miguel Vázquez of the Court of Appeal in Santiago ruled that two ex-officers face murder and six others face complicity. The main perpetrators are therefore Hugo Sánchez Marmonti and Pedro Barrientos Núñez, the latter with an international arrest warrant.
42 years after Jara's murder, ten former Chilean military personnel, including former Lieutenant Pedro Pablo Barrientos Núñez, who now lives in Florida and could be extradited to Chile, were charged with the murder in September 2015. As early as 2013, descendants of Víctor Jaras filed a lawsuit against Barrientos, who allegedly ordered the torture and murder.
Pedro Pablo Barrientos Núñez was found guilty of murder by a civil court in Orlando, Florida, United States on June 28, 2016 and ordered $ 28 million in compensation to be paid to the family condemned by the musician.
On July 4, 2018, eight other former officers were sentenced to 15 years and one day in prison for the murder of Victor Jara and the prison director Littré Quiroga Carvajal. These are Hugo Sanchez Marmonti, Raul Jofre Gonzalez, Edwin Dimter Bianchi, Nelson Haase Mazzei, Ernesto Bethke Wulf, Juan Jara Quintana, Hernan Chacon Soto and Patricio Vásquez Donoso. Another officer, Rolando Melo Silva, was sentenced to five years and 61 days for aiding and abetting.
Musical work
Víctor Jara's songs can be roughly divided into seven groups:
- Songs about the current political events in Chile, e.g. B. Ni chicha ni limoná and “Movil” Oil Special . Some of these pieces are lyrical accusations against the masterminds of political scandals and murders, e.g. B. Las casitas del barrio alto and Preguntas por Puerto Montt - the latter is about a massacre of the poor rural population who have occupied unused land. The responsible politician Ramón Pérez Zujovic, whose name is mentioned in the song, was murdered a few years later, for which Jara felt complicit. He dedicated his album La población to a land occupation in Santiago, which eventually became the Herminda de la Victoria district .
- Popular looking pieces about the life of poor people, but most of them have a more ( Plegaria a un labrador ) or less ( El hombre es un creador ) revolutionary undertone.
- Setting of poems to music, especially those of Pablo Neruda ( Aquí me quedo , Poema 15 ).
- Songs that sing about international solidarity, friendship between peoples or the like, especially Una palabra solamente and El derecho de vivir en paz .
- Cover versions: Among the artists whose songs Víctor Jara liked to re-enact include Daniel Viglietti ( A desalambrar ), Violeta Parra ( La carta ) and Atahualpa Yupanqui ( Duerme Negrito ). For this purpose he adapted American songs, among others by Malvina Reynolds ( Las casitas del Barrio Alto ) and Pete Seeger ( El martillo ).
- Folk music: The folk songs voiced by Jara mostly came from Chile and the neighboring Andean countries, but Hush a bye is also a North American traditional. He dedicated his album Canto por travesura entirely to Chilean folklore.
- Instrumental pieces including Charagua , Cai cai vilú , La partida and the four parts of La remolienda
Musically, the palette ranges from the classic songwriting style (only vocals and guitar) to Andean folklore (accompanied by numerous musicians with indigenous instruments - some of which were banned during the Pinochet reign because they were too reminiscent of Víctor Jara and his companions) to, isolated, slightly rocking, hippiesque sound (in El derecho de vivir en paz ). He was usually accompanied by musicians from the Inti-Illimani or Quilapayún groups , whom he was at their side with advice and action in their early days.
Theater productions
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Discography
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Studio albums
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Live albums
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- Posthumously released albums / compilations
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Appreciations
- chronological -
- 1973–1975: The composer Leon Schidlowsky dedicated his misa sine nomine to Victor Jara.
- 1974: British lyric poet Adrian Mitchell wrote Victor Jara of Chile . The poem was set to music by the American folk singer Arlo Guthrie under the title Victor Jara .
- 1974: The American folk singer Phil Ochs organized the benefit concert An Evening with Salvador Allende in New York City in May . Ochs had met Victor Jara in 1971 during a stay in Chile. The concert at which u. a. Pete Seeger , Arlo Guthrie and Bob Dylan performed, should both remind of Victor Jara, as well as create awareness of the situation in Chile.
- 1974/1976: Folk musicians Joan Baez and Judy Collins recorded songs by Víctor Jara: Baez 1974 Te recuerdo Amanda on their Spanish-language LP Gracias a la vida ; Collins 1976 Plegaria a un labrador on their LP Bread & Roses .
- 1975: The Basel songwriter Ernst Born composed and wrote his song Victor Jara , first released on the LP D'Ballade by dr Münschterfähri (1975).
- 1975: The Norwegian songwriter Lillebjørn Nilsen dedicated a song to Víctor Jara on his album Byen med det store hjetzt .
- 1977: Víctor Jara's life is the subject of Dean Reed's GDR television film El Cantor .
- 1977: The Austrian band The butterflies sang Victor Jara in a song from the proles Passion of Unger .
- in the 1970s: The group Zupfgeigenhansel also showed their solidarity with Víctor Jara in a song of the same name that tells the story of his life (it is a German version of the song by Adrian Mitchell and Arlo Guthrie ).
- 1980: The band The Clash sang him in their song Washington Bullets from the album Sandinista .
- Around 1980: (Although with a different name, but identified by numerous allusions) Víctor Jara emerged as a singer in the novel The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende on.
- 1984: The Modern Soul Band from the GDR mentions him in the song Ideale .
- 1987: The Irish rock band U2 sang on the album Joshua Tree in their song One Tree Hill about Jara: “ And in the world a heart of darkness - A fire zone. Where poets speak their heart then bleed for it. Jara sang - his song a weapon - In the hands of one whose blood still cries from the ground ".
- Around 1983: In the Allende district of Köpenick, a life-size bronze statue for Jara was erected in front of the then Gerhart-Hauptmann-Oberschule in Alfred-Randt-Straße, which the sculptor Peter Goettsche had created.
- Since the 1980s: In Berlin-Biesdorf , a student residence hall bears his name.
- in the 1980s: In Leipzig had in Vorwendezeiten the FDJ established -Jugendclub "Victor Jara". It continues to exist as the Victor Jara Association and organizes vernissages, exhibitions, concerts, readings and parties in the Felsenkeller .
- Mid-1980s: The Argentine group Los Fabulosos Cadillacs sang about him in their song El Matador .
- Mid-1980s: The actress and singer Donata Höffer sang some of Víctor Jara's most famous songs. She was accompanied, among others, by the guitarist Hector Sandos.
- 1988: The actor Peter Franke , husband of Donata Höffer, renamed a shark cutter he had bought because of this close relationship.
- 1989: The band Simple Minds dedicated their song Street Fighting Years to Víctor Jara from the album of the same name.
- in the 1990s: In his song Il giorno del falco, Pippo Pollina impressively tells of the events in the Estadio Chile .
- 1997: Freundeskreis mentions Jara and the CIA activities in Chile in their song Put your ear on the track of history .
- 1998: The Spanish band Ska-P sang the "Unforgettable" in their added chorus to their cover of Jara's song Juan Sin Tierra .
- 1999: The Chilean director Carmen Luz Parot made the documentary El derecho de vivir en paz about Víctor Jara's life. In the film, his widow and some of his fellow inmates from the last days of his life have a say.
- 2001: The German songwriter Hannes Wader published a song about Victor Jara on his album Wünsche .
- 2001/2006: Irish singer-songwriter Christy Moore released a song about Jara's life on his album This Is The Day . To this day, Moore often sings the song written by Adrian Mitchell and set to music by Arlo Guthrie (for example on the CD and DVD Live in Dublin 2006 ).
- In the 2000s: The metalcore band Heaven Shall Burn sang Víctor Jara in the songs The Weapon They Fear , The Martyrs' Blood and The Storms Call You and the victims of the Pinochet dictatorship in general in Buried In Forgotten Grounds .
- 2008: The US-American band Calexico sang him in Victor Jara's Hands from the album Carried To Dust and wants to refer to the present ( Guantanamo Bay , Abu Ghraib ).
- 2010: For the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos in Santiago de Chile, the Chilean artist Jorge Tacla designed a mural with an excerpt from Jara's last poem Estadio Chile .
- 2013: Bruce Springsteen played Jara's song Manifiesto in Spanish at his concert in Santiago de Chile on September 12, 2013 .
- The main inner belt asteroid (2644) Victor Jara is named after him.
literature
- Joan Jara: The last song. The life of Victor Jara. Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-442-72388-4 .
- Joan Jara: Victor. An unfinished song. Verlag Volk und Welt, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-353-00043-7 .
- Joan Jara: Victor Jara - Chile, my country, open and wild. His life. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1987, ISBN 3-499-15523-0 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Víctor Jara in the catalog of the German National Library
- Report of the Chilean Commission on Truth and Reconciliation Part III Chapter 1 (A.2). Archived from the original on December 23, 2007 ; Retrieved June 26, 2009 . (Part of the English language version of the report of the ChileanTruth and Reconciliation Commissionfrom 1991 (knownas the Rettig Commission after ChairmanRaúl Rettig), in which Jara's death circumstances are discussed)
- Official website of the Víctor Jara Foundation (in Spanish)
- Bernd Rexing: 35 years ago: popular singer Victor Jara found murdered. In: WDR3 / WDR5 broadcast “ ZeitZeichen ”. September 16, 2008 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Justicia Proceso a ocho ex militares por asesinato de Víctor Jara on cooperativa.cl
- ↑ Justicia identifica al asesino de Víctor Jara y ordena su captura internacional on elmostrador.cl
- ↑ Procesan a siete exmilitares en Chile por el asesinato de Víctor Jara on publico.es
- ↑ Caso Víctor Jara: Detienen a cuatro de los ocho ex militares procesados por homicidio on radio.uchile.cl
- ↑ a b Arrest warrant against the military for the murder of Victor Jara on welt.de
- ↑ Late honor for Victor Jara Zeit online from December 5, 2009
- ↑ 42 Years Later, Officers Charged for Murder of Defiant Chilean Folk Singer , accessed September 1, 2015
- ↑ a b 10 former Chilean soldiers charged in Victor Jara killing (English), accessed on September 1, 2015
- ↑ Chilean musician: Ex-military convicted in the USA for the murder of Víctor Jara , in: Spiegel Online , June 28, 2016
- ↑ The murder of Victor Jara: Military convicted in Chile , in: Deutsche Welle , July 4, 2018
- ↑ Ex-Soldiers Convicted of Killing Chilean Singer Victor Jara , in: usnews.com , July 4, 2018
- ^ Allmusic, Gracias a la vida by Joan Baez
- ↑ Institute for Monument Preservation (Ed.): The architectural and art monuments of the GDR. Capital Berlin-II . Henschelverlag, Berlin 1984, p. 304/3015 .
- ↑ Viktor Jara Biesdorf student residence, Oberfeldstrasse
- ↑ Ship details for the Victor Jara . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved August 14, 2012 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Diseño para la reflexión. In: Museo de la Memoria y los derechos humanos. Midia, Santiago de Chile 2011, ISBN 978-9-5691-4400-4 .
- ↑ Bruce Springsteen sings Manifiesto. Retrieved September 13, 2013 .
- ^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp. 186 (English, 992 pp., Link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on September 2, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1973 SO 2 . Discovered 1973 Sept. 22 by NS Chernykh at Nauchnyj. "
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jara, Víctor |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Jara Martínez, Víctor Lidio (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Chilean singer, musician and theater director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 28, 1932 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lonquén near Santiago de Chile , Chile |
| DATE OF DEATH | 16th September 1973 |
| Place of death | uncertain: Santiago de Chile , Chile |