Atahualpa Yupanqui: Poet , Musician, Singer

by Claudia Gargiulo

He is born in 1908 in Buenos Aires, in Pergamino District. His real name is Héctor Roberto Chavero. As a teenager he will adopt the pseudonym of Atahualpa Yupanqui — the first name in reference to the Inca Atahualpa, killed by Pizarro1, and Yupanqui after the greatest chief of the Quechuas.
He dies in Paris in 1992, after traveling the world with his guitar and his poetry, songs and thoughts. In his endless wandering, he conveys in an authentic and straight-forward way the feelings of his people and his continent, through his 1,500 compositions and several books.
Proud of his Indian, Criollo, and Basque background, he is conscious that he knows the gauchos and their customs. Thus, he writes about himself, Since he was a young boy his toys were stirrups, spurs, an occasional spear, a couple of daggers… In this way he lets loose his imagination.
He discovers music through the songs of the people of his town. From a very young age, (7 years old) he plays alone with his guitar. They were styles of serene beats, of a clear and nostalgic discourse, in which there was room for all of the words that inspire the plains, the fields of clover, the mountains, the solitary ombu, the gallop of the colts, things of the absent love…In this way he would shape his folk cosmogony.
Later he will begin to study with the maestro Almirón, who presents him with a repertoire that goes beyond the gaucho themes, as with the compositions of Albéniz, Granados, Tárrega, Schubert, Liszt, Beethoven, and Bach, among others, that will expand the horizons of Agustín Roca, a village of eight houses, ten ranches, and a train station.

When he is 9 years old, his family travels to Tucumán, a province to which he will return time and again throughout his life, and where he composes famous zambas, in which he describes the feelings and the landscape of this town, such as Luna Tucumana (Tucuman Moon), or Zamba del Grillo (Cricket Zamba). In his teenage years he returns to Buenos Aires, to Junin. When his father dies, he settles on the life of an artist. He will travel through the towns and cities of Argentina, discovering the misery in which the farmers and indigenous people live. Félix Luna will later point out the difficulty in following his path in detail, since “they are years and years of going from here to there, going sometimes from town to town, staying at other times for years in just any place.”

In this way the traveler with the guitar on his back will do all sorts of work in order to make a living: woodsman, mule driver, coal harrier, telegram delivery man, notary office employee, and journalist, even projecting films on a bed sheet, going from town to town with his friends. I have traveled for years around the hills of my country. I have long lived in the deep ravines, the woods, the thirsty lands where the salt field boasts of a nonexistent sea and its false diamonds. I have spent seasons among indigenous people, kollas, mestizos, and country people. I have slept in shanty houses where misery shames every landscape…

These life experiences will be constantly reflected on his work, taking the role of a troubadour. The consequence of my work is to reflect the reality of men. That is the one intention behind it. We all live with similar problems, some with more difficulties than others. But at the end we are all in the same situation: life. And in it things happen every day.

This life on the road allows him to delve deeply into what it is to be Argentine, its way of living, its philosophy and music. Baguala, vidala, estilo, milonga: those are the fundamental facts, without them there would be no folklore. With the baguala neither the cry, nor the guitar, nor the poet is needed, the baguala does not need the city, she is an entity to herself.
Milonga is the way to meditate. There are two types of milonga: the milonga corralera, because the corral is where people gather, in major key, descriptive, where a man tells about a horse race, or speaks about lovers, knucklebones, a game of taba (a rural game played with cow bones), a duel, criollo style; and there is the milonga decidora (that makes a statement), where the man looks for a necessary solitude to say things. The milonga is from the pampa and the man of the pampa uses a long coil to lasso because he has no obstacles; the northerner has stones in his way, that is why he uses a short coil. Plenty of rope, an open gallop, a horseman in the pampa dominates space. And so, when he plays the guitar he does not sing for two minutes, he uses four décimas (ten-line stanzas), he sings for ten minutes because he has the prairie and time.
Besides, he has no superstition, nor mysteries: because the pampa has no echo, it does not return his voice, but swallows it. The mountain does return his voice to the Indian, and the Indian is filled with fear, lives with the ghosts, never sees the sun rise or set, but saw it at ten in the morning when it landed on the mountain and at three o’clock when it went away…
The zamba and the chacarera are friendly song forms. The zamba is for social gathering, a dance for love.…But, as a prayer, the vidala. And the time does not matter...and I do not need the stimulus of friends, nor of wine. I respond to the interior call, “to the bell,” as Ortega and Gasset used to say…
In this way Atahualpa tells us that the spirit of the vidala confronts man with himself, and with his human condition, his solitude; it is his intimate prayer for speaking with God. The vidala that one loves the most is the one that is not recorded, the one that does not get played on stage with much ado as if preparing the climate; that’s not it. The vidala is mine, it is for me to pray by myself.
Toward the end of the ‘30s he produces his first recordings. In the ‘40s he publishes his first books. A poet of deep social conscience and commitment to its reality, he uses music to spread his message, pursuing his dreams. Music is one of the things that can save the world, because what else would a man want who seeks and finds solace, for hours and days and years and light years, through the generations, with its beauty?
In 1945 he joins the Communist Party, until 1952, when he returns to his independent position. His critical attitude towards the government of Peron will force him into silence for years. His performances are forbidden and he is imprisoned eight times.
He is relentlessly militant in his ideas, something that is reflected in his poetic-musical work and in his statements, causing him numerous persecutions. The day that people become aware of the reason that we come to the world and what we have to do in it, perhaps then will ebb that flow of selfishness that at times drives people to misbehave, to enrich themselves easily, to invent War — those awful things that shorten men’s lives and stain his existence in the universe. If my songs can help people in some small way to destroy that selfishness, and help me to destroy mine, then I am satisfied.
He retires in Cerro Colorado, where he builds his house, in the Province of Córdoba. He will travel to Europe, where he will receive an exceptional welcome touring countless countries, but his break through came in Paris with Edith Piaf. He was friends with Picasso, Paul Eluar, Rafael Alberti, Luis Aragón. He marries Antonieta Paula de Chavero (called “Nanette” by her friends), his other love, a virtuoso pianist who added to Yupanqui’s repertoire around 40 songs under the name of “Pablo del Cerro.”

In 1953 his banishment is lifted and he starts to record again, taking up performing in Argentina anew. He gains great recognition in Japan, Argentina, the rest of America and Europe, highlighted by a series of awards, and by the love of his people, who feel themselves narrated in the sensitivity of his music and poetry.
In this way, Atahualpa describes to us the landscape and the country people, their way of life, their thoughts, and their customs, always with a traditionalist musical perspective, without searching for innovation, with admiration and respect for the old, original rhythms. His poetry goes beyond mere description to become universal reflections about people, leaving us his valuable message of a living memory. n