The quintessential Chilean folk group begins its 70th anniversary celebration with a brief U.S. tour that begins in Chicago. Conjunto Cuncumén was started in February 1955 when Sylvia Urbina, Rolando Arcón and Alejandro Reyes ran into each other at a folk music class, two years after performing together at a youth festival in Budapest. They named their group after the Mapudungun word for “murmur of water”: Cuncumén. In that same year, they went on a seven month tour of Europe which took them to Austria, France, Germany and the Soviet Union. The following year they participated in Violeta Parra’s series of records, El folklore de Chile. The legendary singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, later assassinated by Pinochet’s dictatorship, was one of their early members. From its early days, Cuncumás was more than a group that played and danced to folk music: they went straight to the music’s roots, visiting the small towns and cities where they were born, documenting their particular rhythms and beats. The group stopped performing after the 1973 coup; it wasn’t until 1992 when the group was revived by its current musical director Mariela Ferreira.
