Inti-Illimani Wandered, Found Itself

Spending 15 years in exile isn’t the way any band would choose to advance its career. But for the Chilean ensemble Inti-Illimani, the extended time away from home--most of it spent in Italy--had a surprisingly positive impact.

“When we left Chile in 1973,” explained the group’s singer/guitarist Jorge Coulon, “we were a well-known group among university students, but we didn’t have a huge audience. But when we returned in 1978, there were 5,000 people at the airport waiting for us, and two weeks later we performed in a concert before 200,000 people.”

What Coulon and his companions didn’t realize was that tapes of the music they were recording in Europe were being smuggled into Chile on a regular basis, and eagerly passed from hand to hand.

The six-man Inti-Illimani ensemble, which plays Thursday on a bill with guitarist Paco Pena at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, part of the Eclectic Orange Festival, was among many artists disaffected by the 1973 military coup that resulted in the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende.

Traveling in Italy at the time, the band members, like many Chilean performers and writers, suddenly found themselves without passports or country.

Their persona non grata status was not surprising. In the years before the Pinochet military takeover, Inti-Illimani had been among numerous young, outspoken artists producing strong, socially and politically proactive works under a generic umbrella that came to be known as Nueva Cancion (new song).

“Before the ‘60s,” said Coulon, “music in Chile was a part of show business. It was very light. But at the end of the ‘50s and the beginning of the ‘60s, beginning with Violeta Parra [who committed suicide in 1967], then with Victor Jara [who was publicly tortured and murdered by the Chilean military in late 1973], a more serious approach began and a new music arrived that people called the Nueva Cancion movement.

“There was an affinity with similar movements in Argentina, Mexico, with Tropicalismo in Brazil, with each movement influencing the others,” Coulon said. “We knew about what was happening in Mexico and Brazil, and they knew what was happening here. But each of the artists had their own personality.”

Inti-Illimani, which translates as “sun mountain,” returned to its South American roots. Exploring indigenous musical sources of Chile, Argentina, Peru and other areas, the group gathered dozens of native instruments, discovered musical themes and celebratory songs.

Blending these colorful sounds with sophisticated composing techniques and lyrics that spoke to the common good, the group created music that represented one of the first effective efforts to pull together the many threads of Latin American society.

“People often have stereotyped our music because of the period of history in which we have lived,” Coulon said. “But we think that all artists create from the basis of their experience. And our experience was political. But we are musicians and we don’t want to simply be viewed as just political singers. In Chile, our group was always valued for its music, as well as for what we had to say with our lyrics.

“Now that we have become--and I don’t mean to have any false modesty about this--a sort of institution, we still have the same concerns we’ve had in the past. After all, it is still very complicated in Chile, and the dictatorship has left deep footprints.”

With Coulon, his brother Marcelo and composer-guitarist Horacio Salinas as the only remaining original members, however, Inti-Illimani has its own generation gap, with corresponding differences of interest.

“Those of us who grew up in the ‘60s, we’re still always following everything, because we have that political passion. The newer members also have their concerns, but, you know, not in the same way.”

Generation gap aside, 32 years of longevity hasn’t diminished the vitality or the communicative talents of Inti-Illimani. Although undoubtedly changed by 15 years of exile, the group produces music that continues to simmer with appealing lyricism sweetening the subtle but intense verbal messages that have always been at the heart of its captivating music.

“In Europe we were, for 15 years, singing most of the time for people who didn’t understand our lyrics,” Coulon said. “Coming back to Chile and to Latin America, the lyrics became important again, because people could understand what we were saying.

“But the strength that we developed in our playing continues, hopefully, to remain,” he said, “giving our music the balance between voice and instruments that we have always worked to discover.”

* Paco Pena and Inti-Illimani play Thursday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. 8 p.m. Part of the Philharmonic Society’s Eclectic Orange Festival. $28-$35. (949) 854-4646.