Jorge González: Synthesis and Hinge of Chilean Popular Music

Abstract

This article aims to propose that Jorge González, his music, his iconography, and visual aesthetics in general, as well as his discursivity and public role, or what we will call its locus of enunciation, produces a synthesis of Chilean popular music. From the album La voz de los 80, González rethinks the critical inscription of the history of Chilean popular music, from the 1960s to the present but also for producing a unique encounter between the lyrical tradition that cemented the Nueva Canción Chilena with La Nueva Ola. However, this reading is an effect of the political events that occurred in Chile during the October 2019 revolt, where Jorge González rose as an icon and some of his songs were sung and performed in the massive protests. Confirming, finally, its critical resistance to neoliberal culture, which since the 1980s tried to make disappear the previous musical past.