The Language of Song: Folk Music and Solidarity in the Americas, 1967–74

During the tumultuous years of the ‘long sixties,’ activists throughout the Americas mobilized around a variety of different political projects, guided by a common ideology and a shared set of values. Although radicals in both north and south spoke of inequality and Third World liberation, however, they remained separated by barriers of language, geography, and political priorities defined by local conditions. This paper traces the paths of North American folk musicians who traveled from the United States to Latin America between 1967 and 1974, propelled by a belief in the socialist ideals of Cuba and later Chile. It argues that folk music played a key role in the early development of solidarity networks by providing a common language for activists in both north and south who sought solace from the injustices of capitalist modernity in the idea of an authentic past. Rooted as they were in traditional, ‘authentic’ musical forms and written for the explicit purpose of addressing social, political, and economic ills, northern protest music and southern nueva canción were parallel musical forms closely tied to the social movements of the era. Through the act of making and sharing music – performing together and translating for their audiences – musicians from north and south were able to convey a sense of common identity and to bridge cultural differences. Their experiences speak to the question of how the ‘other’ enters into our social consciousness and the power of culture as a means to both inform and promote expressions of transnational solidarity.