The Contributions of Music-making to the Chilean Exile Experience in Scotland during the 1970s and 1980s through the Eyes of an ‘Exile Music Maker’

The fiftieth anniversary, in 2023, of the CIA-backed coup d’état in Chile has provided an excellent incentive for reflection on the Chile Solidarity Campaign in the United Kingdom. This article is the personal testimony of Carlos Arredondo, a musician and songwriter, and a cultural activist with that campaign in Scotland as a member of the Chilean diaspora in the UK. He seeks to provide insights into the preservation of collective memory, a recurrent theme for millions of Chileans who suffered the abuses of the Pinochet regime for seventeen long and painful years. Based on his personal experiences, Carlos Arredondo explores the culture, identity and resistance of Chilean exiles in Scotland and how these were enriched further through contact with local people. More specifically, this article explores the important role of music in the Chilean Solidarity Campaign in Scotland, in which he was an active participant, drawing on his vast collection of related material, including correspondence, vinyl records, books, posters, leaflets and newspaper articles, bequeathed to him by the ethnomusicologist Jan Fairley just before her death in 2012. Arredondo thus considers the role and importance of tangible material objects related to musical culture in the preservation of collective memory.