About 80 attendees met this Wednesday, April 17 at the Recoleta Cultural Corporation, to welcome the course and learn the details of the classes that will be held during the coming months. The event far exceeded expectations, highlighting the punctuality, great attendance and the resounding presentation of the teachers and musicians of Inti Illimani towards the closing of the session.
Inti Illimani Teachers
The course Musical interpretation and sound identity in Inti Illimani, It is an initiative of the Popular School of the Sol del Illimani Foundation - Culturas del Sur, in collaboration with the Open University of Recoleta and its Institute of Culture and Popular Art (ICAP). In this first inaugural session, students, teachers, musicians and workers from both institutions met to begin this long-awaited course, which seeks to collect and transmit more than fifty years of experience in the music of Inti Illimani. Jorge Coulon, founding member of the group and president of Culturas del Sur, delved into the context and motivation behind this initiative:
We come from a collective experience. From a time when the collective in Chile had tremendous strength and we have continued trying to maintain that characteristic. Collective personalities are different from the sum of individual personalities and that is also the case with musical groups. These are the kinds of things we want to share. Why do we choose one sound or another. Or the experience that marked us regarding the attitude of a group on stage. It was Victor Jara who taught us how to stand on stage. He told us: you can't play “The Revenant” the same way you play “Blue Eyes”; There is a different attitude to touching on one topic or another. Music is not only rhythm and melody, it is also nuances, it is the emotional conduct of a language. How to do a concert. All those types of things, which we have learned for 57 years, we believe can be communicated and can be talked about, and that is the meaning of this course.

After these words, David Azán, Christián “Búho” González, Efrén Viera, Daniel Cantillana, Marcelo Coulon, César Jara, Camilo Lema and Juan Flores, went up to the stage one by one to briefly tell what each of the classes. Percussions, Andean winds, but also clarinet, saxophone, transverse flute, as well as bowed strings, including violins, Mexican guitarrón, double bass, and the entire range of research and incorporation of variants of the instruments that make up the Inti repertoire, will be part which will be worked on class by class, where through pairs they will address the different families of instruments, through live examples of their explorations.

To close - with a flourish - at the end of the presentation of each of the classes, the musicians took position at their respective microphones and instruments, ready and willing on the stage. Three songs: What I want the most, Malagueña and Sevillanas of freedom They made the theater of the Recoleta Cultural Corporation vibrate, exciting the attendees and raising the enthusiasm for what is to come.
The day ended by sharing a coffee in the corporation hall, at which time teachers and students were able to meet and talk.
Coffee and conversation
In this regard, Wilma Dieguez, one of the students, was excited and surprised: I wasn't expecting this intro and the music. It was balm for the spiritFor her part, María Jesús Espinoza, emphasized the interesting nature of the experience of seeing the teachers who will teach them play: I find it a super interesting instance, especially starting a course with the same teachers playing. I am a musician and a teacher and I find this exchange very enriching. I'm super excited about what they seeand. For his part, Javier Olate, another of the course participants, was grateful for the opportunity and valued being able to learn from Inti Illimani's experience: I am very grateful to participate in this school, I hope to take advantage of it, especially being able to share with Chilean musicians with great experience, being in front of them, having them tell us their experience, telling us what they have learned, their musical knowledge and passing it on. to the community, it is very valuable. I think we still don't take into account how valuable it is..



From the Sol del Illimani-Culturas del Sur Foundation, Soledad Silva, executive director, highlighted the trajectory behind the initiative and valued the strength and uniqueness of the proposal demonstrated in this presentation: We are very happy, especially because starting a course with music already brings joy and gives it an imprint that a more orthodox course hardly has. That's a big change. For Escuela Popular it is tremendously significant because we started a project that literally emerged scratched on a napkin and now we are here presenting it. One says today it starts, but there are 5 years of management behind, there is a lot of effort, there is a lot of creativity and a lot of responsibility to open a door to culture and a different education. I think there is courage behind it and there is also a world vision that one always wants to promote in pursuit of culture and justice..
Alliance and projections
From the Open University of Recoleta, an allied institution that worked side by side with the foundation and the musicians of Inti Illimani to materialize this course, Jordi Berenguer, co-director of the Institute of Popular Art and Culture (ICAP), recalled the beginnings of the proposal and the satisfaction of seeing it materialized:
This is something we hoped would happen next, we wanted it to go. In the first conversations, when Jorge, Marcelo and Soledad arrived, they presented the idea of a bond. The concern was: how can we link up so that the experience and knowledge that they have been building—as Jorge said on stage, for more than fifty years—is not lost. How to ensure that this is not just in the group. They had the desire to pass this on. Those were the first conversations. Little by little it was channeled and began to have structure. Arriving today and seeing them on stage saying “this is class one of the course”, that they have been presented class by class, along with the role that all the members are going to play, leaves us very satisfied. We have done a good job and that was reflected in this first presentation. It makes us want to say “what else can we continue doing now.” Reaching this stage inspires us and we hope that from now on more things will come as beautiful as what we are experiencing today..
The course Musical interpretation and sound identity in Inti Illimani, first course of the Popular School, was possible thanks to the alliance between the Municipality of Recoleta and the Sol del Illimani Foundation – Culturas del Sur. It will be held in person, during eight sessions, between April 17 and June 5, on Wednesdays, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Recoleta Cultural Corporation. Those who participate in this first year of the Escuela Popular del Sur will receive a certification from the convening institutions. It is important to mention that all classes will be recorded and this material, along with other audiovisual and educational resources, will create a digital version of the course, which will be shared in the coming months on the UAR virtual platform, to reach every corner. and south of the world.
