Cantos Cautivos

(Captive Songs)

Music was often written, sung and heard in political detention and torture centres in Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

For many political prisoners, to write, play or listen to music were ways to register, process, remember, forget or transcend difficult experiences.

Music helped them to maintain a sense of normality, it was a tool to preserve dignity and hope, to have fun and communicate with other inmates and with the outside world.

The repressive system also employed music as a form of domination and indoctrination, and in connection with torture and other types of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

The memory of these experiences is an important fragment of the lives of those who resisted, fought and shared their stories for this project.

We invite you to explore and share these experiences.

About the project

Portrait of Manuel Flores
Campamento de Prisioneros Chacabuco
Watercolour by Francisco Aedo

Explore

Testimonies can be explored by detention centre, witness or victim, via the menu, the search box or tags.

Your memories on music in detention are part of our collective memory. Share them via a text or audio.

Featured

Interview on CBC/Radio-Canada

On 24 November 2019, CBC broadcast a programme on the soundtrack of protests in Chile, during the current uprising and also in political detention centres during the dictatorship.

Latest talks on Cantos Cautivos by Katia Chornik, project director

Conference of the Sociedad Chilena de Musicología, Santiago, January 2020.
University of Liverpool, November 2019.
University of Oxford, May 2019.
International conference 'Soundscapes of Trauma: Music, Violence, Therapy', Athens, May 2019.
University of Glasgow, March 2019.

The Oxford Research Encyclopedia highlights Cantos Cautivos

An entry on digital resources by Danielle Barefoot notes that our project "serves as a sonic living-museum and offers essential content for survivors, researchers, and teachers." Read it here.

Short Video Tamo Daleko (Punta Arenas / Dawson Island, 2018)

Part of the Fragments of Memory series of the Central University of Chile's Audiovisual Laboratory, this video explores the song “Tamo Daleko”, adapted and used as a symbol of resistance by political prisoners. Watch the video here and see other testimonies about “Tamo Daleko” in Cantos Cautivos. Jan 2019.

Ed Vulliamy launches his book, When Words Fail: A Life with Music, War and Peace

The author, journalist of The Guardian and The Observer, with his band at the launch in London. The book contains a chapter on Cantos Cautivos. Sept 2018. Photo: Daniel Díaz.

Cantos Cautivos at the British Museum

The British Museum's exhibition I Object, Ian Hislop's search for dissent (Sept 2018-Jan 2019) included the recording of "Doctorcitos", collected by the Cantos Cautivos team.

Reconstruction of "Filistoque's Cueca", written by Víctor Canto in Chacabuco concentration camp

Forty-four years later, the work has been reconstructed and recorded for the first time by the group MACOMBA, directed by Marcelo Coulon (Inti-Illimani) and formed in honour of the detained-disappeared Marcelo Concha Bascuñán, who was interned in Chacabuco. Listen to the recording and read the testimony here.

Cantos Cautivos: music, education and technology for human rights.

Panel on the roles of music as an educational resource to address memory and human rights topics, and on the use of internet technology as a tool for dissemination, exchange and research. August 2018, Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago, Chile.