Minute 9: Largo Viaje
In the popular imagination, dead babies go to heaven to pray for those left on earth; they become tiny lawyers, representatives and advocates of those lucky or unlucky enough to stay behind. In this idea, and Violeta’s lyrics, which she picked up from conversations with people in bars and plazas during her travels through Chile, there is a belief in terrestrial reincarnation, similar to that of certain Eastern religions. Each death is mysteriously linked to the seed of new life; substance becomes abstraction, which in turn becomes substance. In the ninth minute of Largo Viaje, these themes are condensed or foreshadowed in the anguish or stoicism of a miniature portrait of 1960s Chile.
Jessica Sequeira on Largo Viaje.