/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-CHILE: The Inti Illimani ‘Trademark’ War

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Jun 22 2004 (IPS) - Inti Illimani, the name of a folk music group that has made history in Chile and around the world as proponents of Latin America’s ”New Song” movement, is today the focus of a heated dispute between its founding members.

Horacio Salinas, José Seves and Horacio Durán, who left the band in recent years, will come together again under the name Inti Illimani on Aug. 20 at the Víctor Jara Stadium in Santiago, in a concert offered jointly with Quilapayún, another legendary Chilean band.

Jorge Coulón, another of the founders, never left the group that he now leads along with his brother Marcelo. He laments the fact that his former bandmates chose to use the name for their return to the stage.

Salinas, Durán, Seves, the Coulón brothers and Max Berrú (from Ecuador) created the group in the 1960s when they were students at Chile’s Universidad Técnica del Estado, which is now the Universidad de Santiago de Chile.

In that era, the popularity of the Latin American New Song (Nueva Canción) movement was spreading like wildfire among students, inspired largely by Argentine singer-songwriter Atahualpa Yupanqui and Chile’s Violeta Parra.

Inti Illimani broke onto the scene with its own trademark sound, closer to Andean rhythms than to Argentina’s “zamba” or the ”milonga campera”, which had a strong influence in that era on the emergence of Quilapayún and several other groups that have since fallen into oblivion.

The group’s innovative approach, largely motivated by the presence of Ecuadorian musician Berrú, was also expressed in the choice of the now- disputed name.

”Inti Illimani” is based on the indigenous Quechua word Inti or sun and the name of the Illimani volcano, whose snowy peak looks down over La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.

In its first albums, Inti Illimani showed enormous musical talent for the ‘sanjuanitos’, ‘taquiraris’, ‘cuecas’ and other Andean rhythms it played, mainly due to the creativity of director Salinas and the support the young musicians received from Víctor Jara and Violeta Parra themselves.

Like Quilapayún, the group was identified with Chile’s Communist Youth, and threw itself behind the presidential campaign for the Popular Unity coalition in 1970, which succeeded in putting socialist Salvador Allende in the country’s highest office.

Allende’s overthrow in the bloody coup d’état of Sep. 11, 1973 occurred just when Inti Illimani and Quilapayún were out of the country. The members of both groups thus began their long exiles. Inti in Italy, and Quilapayún in France.

The European exile experience threw Inti Illimani onto the international music scene as the group enriched and expanded its repertoire. Salinas incorporated local instruments and traditional European rhythms – without losing the group’s Latin American roots.

New members joined the group, but the core of founders remained intact and projected Inti Illimani as the Chilean cultural ambassador in exile, injecting music and emotion into the fight for re-establishing democracy back home.

During the loosening of the dictatorial grip that involved a plebiscite on dictator Augusto Pinochet’s mandate in October of 1988, Inti Illimani was allowed to return to Chile, and became the embodiment of the ”No” campaign, which defeated the dictator at the ballot box.

In late 1997, as the band was celebrating its 30th anniversary, Max Berrú announced that he was leaving to start a solo career as a musician, and another career as a restaurateur.

José Seves, who many considered the group’s best voice, also began to get involved in other musical endeavours, until he finally cut ties in 2000.

The greater loss would come in early 2003 with the departure of director Salinas. And Horacio Durán had his last performance with the group in February 2004 at the Viña del Mar International Song Festival.

And it was from that very same stage in Viña del Mar, the Quinta Vergara, that television stations filled broadcasts with the new image of Inti Illimani.

Jorge and Marcelo Coulón rebuilt the group, keeping on Cuban Efrén Viera, who had joined in the mid-1990s, and adding four young musicians: Daniel Cantillana, Manuel Meriño, Cristián González and Juan Flores.

Jorge Coulón expressed disappointment and sadness at his former bandmates’ decision to use the group’s name for its Aug. 20 concert.

”I don’t want to get involved in a war of words, but I will say that what they have done doesn’t seem right to me,” he told Chile’s La Nación newspaper in an interview published Jun. 9.

Salinas, on the other side of the trenches, said the group led by the Coulón brothers had ”leased” the name Inti Illimani until November of this year, but do not hold exclusive rights. Therefore the ”historic” members of the group are not prevented from using it for the August concert or for later engagements.

The Inti Illimani ”trademark” is in fact the property of a partnership made up of the Coulón brothers, Salinas, Seves, Durán and Berrú, which makes it difficult to imagine an amicable resolution. Instead, it is likely to unfold into a long legal battle.

Meanwhile, the ”new Inti” have announced a tour in Italy in September and another through the United States in October.

The only ”old” member of the group who hasn’t been caught up in the row is Berrú who, ironically, inspired the disputed name.