Manifiesto [English translation]

I don't sing for the love of singing,

or because I have a good voice.

I sing because my guitar

has both feeling and reason.

It has a heart of earth

and the wings of a dove,

it is like holy water,

blessing joy and grief.

My song has found a purpose

as Violeta* would say.

Hardworking guitar,

with a smell of spring.

My guitar is not for the rich

no, nothing like that.

My song is of the ladder

we are building to reach the stars.

For a song has meaning

when it beats in the veins

of a man who will die singing,

truthfully singing his songs.

My song is not for fleeting praise

nor to gain foreign fame,

it is for this narrow country**

to the very depth of the earth.

There, where everything comes to rest

and where everything begins,

song which has been brave song

will be forever new.

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*Violeta: reference to the Chilean ethnomusicologist and visual artist Violeta Parra - the founder of the New Chilean Song movement.

**A reference to Chile's geography.

• Artist:Victor Jara
• Album:Manifiesto (1974)