Paris, 1950: Atahualpa Yupanqui’s indocriollismo and the French Communist Party

ORQUERA, YOLANDA FABIOLA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; XXIX International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA); 2012

Latin American Studies Association (LASA)

The publications and sound recordings released during June and July, 1950, allowed the links between Yupanqui and a leftist and Latin Americanist audience, which he had begun to form during his earliest recitals, to be strengthened and expanded. When Yupanqui returned to Paris in April of 1968, this time as a resident, he once again became involved with Le Chant du Monde, whose new collection, entitled New International Songbook, included artists like Uruguayan Daniel Viglietti, as well as Chilean Violeta Parra through a re-release of her 1956 recordings. In this way, new voices interested in social and political issues of the time came to be known. Yupanqui often clashed with these others, although this did not obscure his role as a founding figure. Among these new artists can be highlighted Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, who together with Fabián Matus and Armando Tejada Gómez, among others, founded the New Songbook Movement in 1963, which was linked to the Argentine Communist Party. This chapter takes into account the process of Yupanqui’s international consecration in France, focusing into the specificities of its political and cultural context