Las Alturas de Machu Picchu: Los Jaivas, Progressive Rock, and the Unmooring of Latin American Identity

Abstract

This chapter proposes a decolonial reading of Chilean band Los Jaivas’ 1981 LP adaptation of the most widely known section of Pablo Neruda’s epic Canto General (first published in 1950) (CG), titled Las Alturas de Machu Picchu [The Heights of Machu Picchu] (LAMP). In the progressive rock tradition of the concept album, this album recounts the rise and splendor of Latin America’s Indigenous cultures, while CG alludes to the subjugation of the colonial period. Where scholars have argued that Neruda’s text employs the conventions of the poetic epic genre in order to relate the colonial history of suffering and injustice to twentieth-century Marxist-revolutionary struggles (Loyola 1987; Rojo 200..