Los Jaivas: Чилилік музыкалық топтың тарихы мен шығармашылығы

Chilean musical group

Los Jaivas is a Chilean musical group who perform in folk, rock, psychedelic, and progressive rock styles formed in 1963 in Viña Del Mar, Chile. They are considered one of the most important and influential artists of all time in Latin America.

The origins of Los Jaivas can be found in the family nucleus made up of the brothers Eduardo, Claudio and Gabriel Parra, from Viña del Mar. Together with their friends and classmates from high school at the Liceo Guillermo Rivera Cotapos, located on Calle Montaña (a few steps de la Quinta Vergara), Los Jaivas appeared in Chilean music in August 15, 1963, under the name of The High & Bass as a progressive rock andino group, mixing rock with South American ancestral music. This name was proposed by Rolando Fuentes (a friend of founding member Claudio Parra during high school). At that time in Chile, it was customary to use English names for musical bands. Another source indicates that the name is a reference to the members differences in height, since the word in Spanish for bass guitar is the same as that for short (bajo). Another source explains the name as a reference to the bass guitar played at a very high volume compared to the other instruments. During the following six years, and with its stable formation (Eduardo on keyboards, Claudio on accordion and piano, Gabriel on drums, Gato on guitar and Mario on bass) the band develops its musical proposal at parties and social gatherings in Viña del Mar, mainly performing music tropical, cha cha cha, bossa nova and boleros, with good results. They quickly realized that an English sounding name was not appropriate for a folk band, so they changed it to Jaivas (HIGH BASS), a "Chileanized" pronunciation of "high bass" which ignores the fact that bass (the musical instrument) rhymes with base and lace in English, as opposed to the word bass (the fish) which rhymes with cass and lass, which is how the syllable vas is pronounced in the band's name. The spelling of Jaivas is a misspelling of the word jaibas, which means crabs in Spanish. Between 1970 and 1971, and with its Spanishized name "Los Jaivas", the group's concerts became absolute improvisations, without scripts or prepared schemes, and with each musical instrument generating its own atmosphere, even with the help of the audience. Improvisation leads them to the appreciation of Latin American musical roots and to the exploration of the sounds of ancestral instruments, which allows them to combine apparently irreconcilable styles, but which Los Jaivas decide to capture in their subsequent musical creation. The band took refuge in Argentina after the military dictatorship took over in Chile. On March 22, 2011 Los Jaivas make a presentation in tribute to the then American president Barack Obama in the courtyard of Los Cañones of the Palacio de La Moneda.

The band celebrated its 50th anniversary in an open concert on the front of the National Museum of Fine Arts of Santiago de Chile. Special guests were Inti Illimani, Los Tres and Congreso among others. The concert attracted a multitude of over 60,000 people, causing mayor upheaval in the city, and the police had to intervene with water cannons.

In March 2013, the same year as the celebration of the band's 50th anniversary, Chilean Dutch filmmaker Erasmo de la Parra (son of Claudio Parra) convinced the musicians to make a biopic based on the band's formative years. The film would be set in the 1960s in Viña del Mar, from the time they were known as "The High Bass" to the time they became known as "Los Jaivas". The director revealed on the film's official Facebook page that the production would have gone through long negotiations with Netflix, but that the production house eventually chose other projects. The film, titled The High Bass, is in pre production with an unknown release date, and with the participation of Belgian, Dutch, and British producers.