Publisher's Synopsis
The Lost Recordings is an audio documentary about Nueva Canción, a musical movement that emerged across Latin America in the 1960s and '70s. The genre became an essential means of artistic expression and social resistance to the many dictatorships and oppressive regimes of the time.
While covering the Chilean protests of 2019, Mexican journalist Luis Alberto González witnessed how the Nueva Canción's songs continue to thrive today. He starts an obsessive investigation into the origins of popular Latin American music genre and events take an unexpected turn when he stumbles upon a rare collection of vinyl records and tapes. This leads him to unearth a live concert recording of Victor Jara, the beloved activist and composer who was brutally tortured and murdered during Augusto Pinochet's coup d'etat in Chile in 1973.
As we dive deeper into the history of those troubled years, a crucial question arises: How come new Chilean generations still safeguard those old songs as powerful symbols, while in Mexico most of the countercultural voices of the '70s have been long forgotten? Chapter by chapter, interview by interview, the documentary sheds light on the personal and social sides of the Nueva Canción movement, as well as the impact it still has today.
