Eroteme team up with Chilean archival collective, MUCAM & Mississippi records to present a night of film, music and talks exploring the Chilean folkloric tradition - Canto a lo divino.
Canto a lo divino – collective musical memory from Chile
Canto a lo divino is a unique musical expression of the Chilean peasant world. It is mostly rooted in the Central Valley, a space at the skirt of the mountains, valleys and dry land between the Choapa Province in the north and the Linares Province in the south, following the slopes of the major rivers crossing the different territories and towns of this great region: Choapa, Aconcagua, Maipo, Cachapoal, Tinguiririca, Mataquito and Maule.
The canto is structured in décimas and nourished by Biblical stories and other sacralised texts. It has persisted for centuries in the voices of hundreds of men and women who have passed it from one generation to the next in various popular ceremonies. There are countless entonaciones (melodies) that define these territories, communities and subjects in unique ways and reflect the complexity of their devotion.
Community gatherings take place around images, saints, crosses and angelitos (very young children who have died), each with their own local idiosyncracies. They are also centred around life itself: productive work, family ties, places, symbols and words, traditions and modernities. The inheritances of both contemporary and ancient life inform the power and knowledge of the canto.
Join us for a night of film, music and talks exploring the canto tradition. We will share:
- New short documentaries on canto a lo divino and other regional musical traditions
- Talk, Q&A and listening party for the new 2LP Canto a lo divino, out in the spring on legendary American folkloric label Mississippi Records https://www.mississippirecords.net, with filmmakers Danilo Petrovich and Rodrigo Astaburuaga from the Chilean folkloric archive MUCAM (Museo Campesino en Movimiento) https://www.mucam.cl, and folkloric researchers and musicians Ivan and Alvaro Daguer from the contemporary psych-folk Chilean band Glorias Navales
The mission of MUCAM (Museo Campesino en Movimiento) https://www.mucam.cl is to preserve traditions and encourage social development in the rich and diverse rural world of Chile, through interdisciplinary work spanning anthropology, architecture, communication, visual arts, oenology, engineering and history. The ‘museum’ does not have a single space of action, rather, it should be understood as the possibility of linking different peasant territories to create a wider cultural map or ways of living, making visible these territories’ great variety and quality of techniques, knowledge, products and customs.
Mississippi Records was dreamt up 21 years ago.\ \ Vital but often overlooked music made accessible through quality and affordable records and tapes, with respect to artists and their vision.
Eroteme is a Manchester based concert series championing experimental music from the hinterlands. Home of the Uncategorizable. Foraging new sonic territories in electronics, improvisation and beyond.