LFU:online

• Scientific skills development (formulating research questions, structuring, planning and writing an essay, quotation)
• Text analysis in historical context
•  Knowledge of various poetic and musical traditions of popular culture in Spanish.  
• Insight into Latin American history of the 60's and 70's.

The decades of the 1960s and 1970s were extremely convulsive in Latin America: after the first liberating impulse inspired by the Cuban revolution, many countries had to face the imperialist advances of the United States and the violent occupation of power by military governments. In this context of social and political struggles, music, and more specifically songs (canción), grew as a one of the main forms of expression and mobilization of the popular masses. The New Latin American Song of this period was characterized mainly by its character of protest against the institutions and repressive powers, and by its search for a genuine local identity, inspired by the artistic expressions of the rural classes and indigenous peoples. 

In this course we will travel through Latin America and its 20th century history, through the music of some of the most important authors of the New Song, such as Violeta Parra, Victor Jara, Mercedes Sosa, Victor Vigglietti, Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Silvio Rodriguez, or Pablo Milanés. We will address not only the social topics contained in the songs, but also their poetic composition (rhyme, metrics, metaphors and symbols, etc.), and try to trace the past and present continuities with respect to other poetic expressions such as Spanish romancero, hip-hop, or even reggaeton.

• Group auditions.
• Short historical and theoretical inputs from the instructor.
• Analysis of audiovisual material (students will be provided with a playlist on youtube and Spotify).
• Group preparation of thematic units.

• Reading of all secondary and primary texts
• Active participation in the discussions
• Design of a unit on a selected author 
• Individual proseminar paper in German (10 pages) or Spanish (8 pages)

A bibliography of primary and secondary sources will be made available via OLAT at the beginning of the course. The following works may be used as introductory reading: 

Marisol García. Canción Valiente. 1960-1989. Tres décadas de canto social y político en Chile. Santiago: Ediciones B Chile. 2013.

Juan Pablo González Rodríguez. Pensar la música desde América Latina. Problemas e interrogantes. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2012. 

Advanced Spanish knowledge