Music matters

[donsu]

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1219-20.htm


Soldiers discarded Victor Jara's body at a cemetery entrance south of Santiago. Before shooting him, Generalissimo Augusto Pinochet's men shattered Jara's hands with rifle butts, seemingly afraid that even dead he might pick up a guitar and sing, "La Plegaria a un Labrador" -- The Prayer to a Worker.

Stand up, look at your hands
Give your hand to your brother and grow
We'll go together, united by blood

Joan Turner buried her husband, told anyone who would listen that a dictator had done this crime, then fled Chile with her two daughters. In parting defiance of the regime that killed a poet, she took her husband's name and became Joan Turner de Jara.

"Music was very, very important in a popular unity time. It was something that joined people together," Joan said. "Victor was sort of a famous figure who was very outright in his political support of the popular unity program. He was -- some people would call him famous, other people would call him notorious, depending on which view they took."
-snip-
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the article ends with:

Stand up, look at your hands
We'll go together, united by blood,
Now and in the hour of our death.
Amen. Amen. Amen.