La Cueca, Antes de Dios (To the Moon & Back #2)

La Cueca, Antes de Dios
Santiago & Valparaíso, Chile, 2013-2019
by Vincent Moon

“Chile has always been a special land in my heart – it's there that I travelled in 2010 to document the music scene of Valparaíso, and there that, in many ways, my nomadic life started. I never stopped travelling and recording since then, and it makes sense that this strange country facing the vast and infinite ocean stole my heart and opened so many adventures. During this trip to Chile, where I was invited by the IN-EDIT film festival, a local friend and producer, Natalia Arcos, took me on a ride one night, telling me, “Now, you are gonna discover the real soul of Chile”. She was taking me to one of the few bars or venues where you will find cueca.

What I discovered there – what I lived there – opened an intense fascination for popular music. Those places where the music, the space, the people dancing, the people drinking… the entire experience makes sense and is interwoven in itself. A popular, everyday ceremony, you might say.

The cueca brava music scenes in Valparaíso and Santiago, which many compare to the tango scene in Buenos Aires or the fado scene in Lisbon (only much less popular and away from tourism), had been going through hard times under the Pinochet years. They had been manipulated and stripped of their radical potential for social commentary; it was only in the early 2000s that many (young) locals rediscovered it… and danced it, played it and re-invented it.

On that first night of cueca in my life, I told Natalia, "Next time I come back to Chile, I want to make a documentary about this music.” Two years later, I returned, and over many nights of wandering and dancing, we paid homage to this unique vibration, this erotic potential (powered by the drinks; the terremoto is a classic) and the intense beauty of those short songs. I can still hear myself screaming, “Hay duende, hay duende!”

We were lucky enough to meet important figures such as Margot Loyola, El Baucha (Luis Hernán Araneda) and Luis Castro González, who narrates the film. They have all since left us, so let’s allow this film to pay homage to them and to all the wonderful characters who welcomed us.

Enjoy this documentary, long cherished but never truly published; viva Chile, viva la cueca!”

For other sonic adventures, go to vincentmoon.com where more than 1,300 films are released for free under a Creative Commons license