Saturday Residency: Counterflows presents Canto a lo divino

After their Civic House Party on Friday night, the Counterflows Residency continues to explore Chilean culture on Saturday with a day of screenings, talks, performance, and music.

Join us for a day of film, music and talks exploring the canto tradition. We will present new short documentaries on canto a lo divino and other regional musical traditions, plus a listening party for the new 2LP ‘Canto a lo divino’, out in the spring on legendary American folkloric label Mississippi Records.

There will also be a talk and Q&A about the making of the films and the record with filmmakers Danilo Petrovich and Rodrigo Astaburuaga from the folkloric archive Museo Campesino en Movimiento (MUCAM), and folkloric researchers and musicians Ivan and Alvaro Daguer from the contemporary psych-folk Chilean band Glorias Navales. Also joining via video link will be Gordon Ashworth from Mississippi Records.

The night ends with a DJ set of traditional and contemporary Chilean folk music.

Vigilia campesina en La Gruta (Danilo Petrovich, 2018)

Canto a lo divino is a unique musical expression of Chilean society. It is mostly rooted in the Central Valley, a space at the skirt of the mountains, valleys and dry land between the Choapa Province in the north and the Linares Province in the south, following the slopes of the major rivers crossing the different territories and towns of this great region: Choapa, Aconcagua, Maipo, Cachapoal, Tinguiririca, Mataquito and Maule.

The canto is structured in décimas and nourished by Biblical stories and other sacralised texts. It has persisted for centuries in the voices of hundreds of men and women who have passed it from one generation to the next in various popular ceremonies. There are countless entonaciones (melodies) that define these territories, communities and subjects in unique ways and reflect the complexity of their devotion.

Community gatherings take place around images, saints, crosses and angelitos (very young children who have died), each with their own local idiosyncracies. They are also centred around life itself: productive work, family ties, places, symbols and words, traditions and modernities. The inheritances of both contemporary and ancient life inform the power and knowledge of the canto.

This is a ticketed event: please enquire through the event curator, Counterflows (available soon).