Victor Jara An Unfinished Song Analysis

1208 Words3 Pages

Victor Jara, An Unfinished Song is the biography of Victor Jara as told by his wife, Joan. Victor spent his youth in the poor urban areas of Chile during the time of World War II. Victor 's peasant background had a major effect on his songs because they were all about the political struggles of the lower class in Chile during that time period. Although he started his music career with lyrics influenced by his upbringing, politics were always an undeniably evident theme in all of Jara 's songs because it was an unavoidable topic. There was a lot of violence, corruption, and injustice going with Chilean politics. Victor used music as a weapon in war, challenging the government and calling out all of the things he didn 't like about the way his country was being run. “By the late sixties, Victor 's songs were no longer autobiographical but dealt much more with the general problems, tasks and objectives facing the peoples of Latin America – even though they were very …show more content…

Although his songs were dark and emotional, his lyrics were very real which is why people appreciated them so much. The words he sang influenced people in Chile during the time of the war by giving them a sense of hope, reassuring his audience that regardless of how bad things are, each individual person in the community has voice and if everyone 's voice can come together, they can make a change. People liked to believe in the idea that they had the power to make a difference in their country and that they had the power to end the violence. To Victor, being a popular musician meant that he had the power to influence people with his songs about politics and the corrupt government in which he had to live under. He had the power to have his voice heard by millions of people and that 's all that mattered to him because he wanted people to know how he felt about the violence and the mass murders going on during that

Open Document