Milestones

Los Jaivas

Name: Los Jaivas – Alturas de Machu Picchu
Item: Alturas de Machu Picchu
Author: Federico Romagnoli

Alturas de Machu Picchu

1981 (Sym producciones)

progressive folk, progressive rock, Andean rock

by Federico Romagnoli

On August 15, 1963, a band called High Bass performs live for the first time, at the municipal theater of Viña del Mar. The lineup consists of the three Parra brothers – Claudio on piano, Eduardo on keyboards and Gabriel on drums – along with two of their schoolmates, Eduardo “Gato” Alquinta (voice and guitar) and Mario Mutis (bass).

The quintet performs covers of local popular music alongside classics of Latin American culture, ranging from bossa nova to Cuban song.

While many believe the name alluded to the difference in height between the Parra brothers and the other two, it seems it was actually inspired by the range of their vocal registers. What is certain is that, swept up by the political climate and the student protests at the end of the the Sixties, the band members feel the need to further embrace their own culture, and the name starts to be perceived as a “gringo” element [note 1]. After briefly calling themselves Pan Negro, they decide to go back to their original name and spell out its pronunciation as if it belonged to the Spanish language: High Bass thus becomes Jai Vas, later merged into a single word.

This change is followed by a stylistic shift, with the band growing ever more ambitious, making room for improvisation and cross-pollination: their music now blends rock from north of the equator, Western classical music (Claudio studied piano at the Conservatory of the University of Chile), and local singer-songwriter tradition – with Violeta Parra as their guiding star [note 2] – and an in-depth study of the folkloric traditions of various Latin American countries, driven in particular by Alquinta following a series of journeys.

After a first self-produced album pressed in a limited edition of five hundred copies in 1971 ("Los Jaivas", also known as "El volantín"), the band signed to Industria de Radio y Televisión, a state label whose backing enabled a considerable leap in quality: the new album, again titled "Los Jaivas" and usually referred to as "La ventana", came out in 1973 and achieved considerable success, spawning two classics such as "Mira niñita" and "Todos juntos". It would be their last album released in Chile that decade: on 11 September 1973 Augusto Pinochet carried out the coup that overthrew Salvador Allende and launched a fierce persecution of left-wing activists, which led, among other things, to the killing of the singer-songwriter Víctor Jara.

Fearing they might end up in the authorities' crosshairs, Los Jaivas emigrate to Argentina: there they will release their subsequent albums up until 1977. Meanwhile, a military dictatorship also takes hold in Argentina, and once again Los Jaivas find themselves in an uncomfortable position: after a brief, intimidatory arrest of Eduardo, they decide to move to France, where they go through their toughest financial period, managing to get by through live performances.

In 1980 the band was approached by Peruvian producer Daniel Camino, who had an ambitious project in mind: setting to music "Alturas de Macchu Picchu", a poem by Pablo Neruda, making a record with major guests such as Chabuca Granda and Mercedes Sosa (the most important female voices of Peru and Argentina), as well as an accompanying video for the work, to be shot amid the ruins of the ancient Inca citadel. The band was initially reluctant, but changed their minds when Argentine multi-instrumentalist Alberto Ledo, part of the lineup since 1975, produced a short instrumental piece inspired by those writings.

The result was so evocative that it convinced the other members to attempt the experiment. Curiously, it would also be Ledo's last contribution to their repertoire: shortly afterwards the musician decided to leave for California to record an album on his own, before eventually returning to his native Argentina. The piece was titled "Del aire al aire", after the words that open the poem.

The first puzzle to solve concerned the form of adaptation: for reasons of space, it was impossible to turn the entire poem into a sung work. The band was torn between an instrumental commentary to accompany a reading of the work and writing proper songs. They settled on a middle path, singing only a selection of verses and leaving room for instrumental digressions describing the feelings evoked by Neruda.

The record was cut almost entirely at Pathé-Marconi studios in Paris, except for "Del aire al aire", recorded by Ledo in the gardens of the house where the band was living at the time, in Châtenay-Malabry, and "Sube a nacer conmigo hermano", recorded in Germany at the Emi-Electrola studios in Cologne.

As if following the canons of a symphonic poem, "Del aire al aire" opens the album with a zampoña (pan flute) melody that simulates the unspoiled air of the Andean landscape, with an ethereal sound thick with echo. Next comes "La poderosa muerte", drawn from cantos II, III, VI and VII of Neruda's poem:

Cos'era l'uomo?

In che parte della tua conversazione aperta fra i magazzini e i sibili,

in quale dei suoi movimenti metallici

viveva l'indistruttibile, l'imperituro,

la vita?

Tutti svennero

awaiting their death,

their brief daily death.

And their fateful ruin, day after day,

was like a black cup from which they drank, trembling.

Thus up the stone stairway I climbed

through the atrocious tangles of lost jungles

up to you, Machu Picchu,

high city of stepped stones,

dwelling, at last, of that which was earthly

and did not hide among the slumbering garments.

In you, like two parallel lines,

the cradle of lightning and man

swayed in the wind of thorns.

Mother of stone, spume of condors,

tall coral reef of the human dawn.

When the hand tinted with clay

turned into clay

and when the small eyelids

closed

full of rough walls

populated by castles,

and when whole man

tangled himself in his hole,

exactness was consecrated,

the high site of the human dawn,

the tallest pitcher that held silence,

a life of stone after so many lives

The track runs eleven minutes and consists of a sonic fresco prog divided into several sections, infused with the sounds of Quechuaculture, such as the tarka (a square-shaped duct flute) and the quena (cane flute), as well as Mapucheculture, such as the trutruca (horn with a sound similar to the didgeridoo Australian).

The arrangement is extremely intricate: guided by Claudio's crystalline piano notes, martial passages, accelerations and structural shifts follow one another, with syncopated riffs hard rock, regional rhythms like the cueca (a dance widespread throughout Spanish-speaking South America), but also futuristic breaks, like the Minimoog theme played by Eduardo, which characterizes the final section. Worth noting, shortly after the sixth minute, are some intense rolls that run across all twelve toms of the drum kit (the original Ludwig kit included nine toms, but Gabriel customized it by adding three).

"Amor americano" contains a selection of verses from Canto VIII:

Rise with me, American love,

kiss with me the secret stones.

The torrential silver of the Urubamba, [note 3]

makes the pollen fly from its yellow cup.

Fly into the void of the climbing vine,

of stony silver, of the hard garland

over the silence of the mountain gorge.

Love, love, even the abrupt night,

even the sonorous Andean flint,

toward the dawn with red knees,

contemplates the blind son of the snow.

Oh, Willkamayu of the sonorous threads, [note 3]

when you break your linear thunders

into white foam, like wounded snow,

when your stormy precipice

sings and punishes the sky at daybreak,

what language you barely carry into hearing,

uprooted from your Andean foam?

Love, love, do not touch the border

and do not worship the submerged head.

Let time take on its full body

in its hall of broken springs,

and between the swift water and the walls

gather the air of the ravine,

the parallel sheets of wind,

the blind channel of the ridges,

the bitter greeting of the dew,

and rise, flower upon flower, through the thicket,

trampling the fallen serpent.

Come to my being, to my dawn,

up to the crowned solitudes.

The dead kingdom still lives

Mutis and Alquinta swap bass and guitar exclusively for this track, both showing off virtuoso skills. The rhythm is a trote nortino, a typical dance from northern Chile, closely related to the carnavalito Argentine and huayno Peruvian.

Alquinta's ringing voice stands out, its singing style – common among South American groups of the era and particularly among Chilean ones, think Inti Illimani and Quilapayún – unfolding a blend of ceremonial solemnity, militant combative spirit, popular troubadour-like communion and ancestral echoes descending from native peoples.

The second side of the vinyl opens with “Águila sideral”, set to a selection of verses from Canto IX:

Aquila siderale, vigna nebbiosa,

bastione perduto, scimitarra cieca.

Cintura stellata, pane solenne,

serpente minerale, rosa di pietra.

Cordigliera essenziale, tetto marino,

cupola del silenzio, patria pura.

Ramo di sale, ciliegio dalle ali nere,

onda d'argento, direzione del tempo.

Aquila siderale, serpente andino,

sidereal eagle, moon of quartz,

sidereal eagle, bride of the sea

The electric guitar arpeggio that opens the track was processed by running the instrument's cable through a Minimoog, giving it a dark tone close to the post-punk music of the era. The 6/8 rhythm is driven by drums treated with a delay on the sixth beat, and by bass harmonies, over which melancholy piano trills and a recurring theme performed by the quena unfold. Alquinta's voice is distorted by a flangereffect, though it's possible it was also filtered through the Minimoog.

"Sube a nacer conmigo hermano" is based on Canto XII:

Sali fino a nascere con me, fratello,

give me your hand from the deep zone

of your scattered sorrow.

You will not return from the depths of the rocks.

You will not return from subterranean time.

Your hardened voice will not return.

Non torneranno i tuoi occhi forati.

Look at me from deep within the earth,

peasant, weaver, silent shepherd,

tamer of guardian guanacos,

builder of daring scaffolds.

Waterer of Andean tears,

goldsmith with crushed fingers,

farmer trembling amid the seed,

potter bent over his clay.

Bring to the cup of this new life

your old buried sorrows.

Show me your blood and your furrow,

tell me: here I was punished!

Because neither the jewel nor the earth could shine,

because you could not deliver in time, the stone or the grain.

Show me the stone on which you fell

and the wood on which they crucified you.

Light the old flints for me,

the old lamps, the whips embedded

through the centuries in the wounds

and the axes of bloody brightness.

I have come to speak in the name of your dead mouth.

Tell me everything, chain by chain,

link by link, step by step.

Sharpen the knives you have kept,

put them upon my chest and in my hand.

Like a river of yellow rays,

like a river of buried tigers,

and let me weep,

for hours, days, years,

blind ages, starry centuries

The description of the dismay and oppression suffered by ancestral man is sublimated, exorcised in a song of pride and uprising built on the accelerated rhythm of a joropo (a traditional dance from Venezuela and Colombia), drawing on the musicality of the original poem's hendecasyllabic verses with alternating assonant rhyme.

"Final" closes the album with a frenzied piano fugue, set to the last lines of Canto XII:

Give me silence, water, hope.

Give me war, iron, volcanoes.

Cling to my body like magnets.

Go into my veins and my mouth.

Speak through my words and my blood

Chabuca Granda and Mercedes Sosa do not appear on the album, as had initially been planned, perhaps also due to the logistical difficulties of bringing the artists together.

As soon as the sessions wrap up, Los Jaivas finally return to Chile: on August 21 and 22, 1981, they play two concerts at the Teatro Caupolicán in Santiago, still remembered today as a messianic event (on this, we recommend reading this article by Cristofer Rodríguez for NacionRock).

Between September 9 and 12, they then fly to Peru, funded by the Chilean Canal 13 and Peruvian state television, and, having traveled among the ruins of Machu Picchu, shoot videos for all seven tracks. The direction is by Chilean filmmaker Reynaldo Sepúlveda, while the presentation of the themes explored in the various songs is entrusted to Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. The special airs a month later, timed with the release of the album.

“Alturas de Machu Picchu” is the band's first album to be released in their homeland in eight years. Its publication was made possible by shifting circumstances: with the economy on the verge of collapse (Chile would enter a recession in 1982) and the need to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the Western democracies that had allowed Pinochet's rise to power, the regime began to loosen its grip (this, within a few years, paved the way for the emergence of Los Prisioneros, a band fiercely critical of the regime). Los Jaivas' return to the national media, moreover with a work dedicated to a poet who had been banned by his own government, was a strategic signal of openness that also helped improve Pinochet's reputation at home, finally giving young people the chance to discover the country's most important rock band.

“Alturas de Machu Picchu” is now regarded as one of the greatest Spanish-language albums of all time (the Chilean edition of Rolling Stone ranked it the second-best national album, right behind “Las últimas composiciones” by Violeta Parra).

It is also the album that marks the end of the golden age of Andean rock: born at the dawn of the Seventies, thanks in part to Los Jaivas' own fusion of local tradition and rock music, particularly of the progressive kind [note 4], the style reaches its point of no return with “Alturas de Machu Picchu”, the peak of structural complexity, production quality and symbolic depth, right at the moment when music is heading in an entirely different direction.

The album achieves great success, particularly thanks to “Sube a nacer conmigo hermano”, though it does not, at least immediately, spawn bands willing to follow in its footsteps, perhaps also due to the sheer technical difficulty of the material.

Trivia: in the first Chilean edition of the album, the Inca city is spelled “Machu Picchu” on the cover, “Macchu Picchu” on the vinyl label, and “Machu Pichu” on the inner sleeves containing the lyrics. Official streaming services currently list it as “Macchu Picchiu”, but for this article we have chosen to use the spelling that appeared on the original cover, designed, like many others of theirs, by Chilean painter René Olivares.

[note 1]Literally "foreigner," but in this specific case it's used ironically to refer to the lifestyle and worldview typical of North Americans, particularly because of the aspects considered most "colonialist" in terms of cultural penetration or political-economic subordination (especially during the Cold War years). In this sense, it should be kept in mind that in the work of Los Jaivas, as in all of new Latin American song and more broadly in Latin American culture of the period, the concept of "American" claims the idea of a linguistic, historical and cultural brotherhood shared by all Ibero-American nations, including Portuguese-speaking Brazil, within an idealized and celebrated continental "patria grande."

[note 2]Despite sharing the same surname, the three Parra brothers have no connection whatsoever to the Parra family of San Carlos, which, besides Violeta, produced the poet Nicanor and numerous other artists and musicians.

[note 3]The Urubamba River, which flows past the citadel of Machu Picchu, during the

Inca period was known as Willkamayu (in Quechua, "Sacred River") and, on a mythological level, represented a river of stars, a sort of Milky Way that carried the waters of the Amazon and the Pacific Ocean up to the Andean peaks.

[note 4]Among the other founding bands of the movement were the Chilean Congreso, the Argentine Arco Iris and the Peruvian El Polen.

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14/06/2024

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition