Garganta de piedra: el canto artificial de Alberto Kurapel y la recepción de chilenos exiliados en Montreal durante los setenta

Abstract

Alberto Kurapel’s musical work still is a field largely overlooked by researchers, due both to the incipient state of scholarship on Chilean music in exile during the last dictatorship, as well as the more accurate categorization of this artist in the realm of acting and dramaturgy. The fact is that, aside from his significant contributions to drama, he worked actively as a singer-songwriter in Montreal, where he lived as an exile; becoming probably one of the most prolific exilic singers, as far as discography is concerned. Among his seven albums released during that period, this paper scrutinizes the first three: Chili: Amanecerá la siembra (1975), Chili: Guitarra adentro (1977) y A tajo abierto (1978). In particular, it seeks to examine the tripartite relationship between certain notions of vocality employed in some of his songs, the differences he had with Chilean exiles audiences, and the conception of artificiality in his “de exilio” performance. To this end, the paper draws on a number of Kurapel’s essays, and the concepts of frame analysis and personae from the performance theory of Philip Auslander, in addition to several interviews with Chilean exiles.

Keywords

• alberto kurapel
• exile
• montreal
• voice
• audience
• chilean music