Charly Gareía's allegories as counter-discourse

• Published in: Confluencia (Greeley, Colo.) Colo.), 2012-04, Vol.27 (2), p.61-74
• Main Author: Favoretto, Mara
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Censorship; Dictators; Genre; Ideology; Language; Metaphor; Music; Musical performances; Musicians & conductors; Poetics; Politics; Spanish; Word meaning
• ISSN: 0888-6091

According to Polimeni, on 2 June 1966, some young guys in a band called Los Beatniks, Pajarito Zaguri and Morís Biravent, persuaded the general director of an international record company that it was worth recording some rock songs in Spanish. Because of space limitations in this article, this study will only look at two key moments in Garcías career as an allegorist: his first and his final two albums, which were released during the years of the rise and fall of the military dictatorship respectively. According to Fletcher, "the allegorist looks at life as if it were a game of getting and exploiting power" (Fletcher 77).2 As a mental secret, as a challenge, allegory attacks incognito the foundations imposed by religious faith and political ideology so that power occupies a central position. Because of the political circumstances in which this music found itself trapped during many years, the genre developed poetics that move around coded messages, allegorical meanings, plays on words, and subtext that might appear invisible to an ingenuous receptor.7 Indeed, sophisticated metaphors require a trained authence. [...]many of Garcías songs were only understood or deciphered years after their release and continue to reveal new ideas when re-visited decades afterwards.8 While it is known around the world that the "Dirty War" killed 30,000 people categorized as the "disappeared," the fact that the target of repression was mainly the youth and their artistic expressions such as rock is not as well known.