Poesía popular chilena: Imaginarios y mestizajes culturales

Abstract

This article seeks to analyse the imaginaries that are featured in popular Chilean poetry in the light of the concept of cross-cultural mixing ("mestizaje") put forward by Fran- çois Laplantine and Alexis Nouss. By considering the various legacies of this art as prac- tised in Latin America since the colonial era, as well as the successive re-appropriations of which they have been object, we will probe into the imaginary staged by the popular poets of the present. Starting from direct observational work of various encounters of popular singers ("payadores") in Chile, several dimensions will be taken into ac- count in the analysis: sound imaginary (voice, musical instruments), theatrical (types of staging, places of the spectacle, relation with the audience) and textuality (contents, characters, invoked situations), in order to comprehend the complexity of this artistic phenomenon, to approach it as a "whole social event".