Northern Chile was an important center of culture in the medieval and early modern Inca empire, while indigneous Mapuche and other Araucanian cultures developed in the Central and Southern regions. Culture was afterwards dominated by the Spanish during the Colonial and early Republican period. Other European influences, at first chiefly English and French, began in the 19th century and have continued until today, as in other Western societies.

Dance and music

The national dance is the cueca (short for zamacueca) and first appeared in 1824. Another form of traditional Chilean song, though not a dance, is the tonada. Arising from music imported by the Spanish colonists, it is distinguished from the cueca by an intermediate melodic section and a more prominent melody. In the mid-1960s native musical forms were revitalized by the Parra family with the Nueva Canción Chilena, which became associated with political activism and reformers like Chilean socialist Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity government. Violeta Parra, Víctor Jara, Los Jaivas, Inti-Illimani, Illapu and Quilapayún are performers of this music. During the military rule in the 1970s, all forms of public expression contrary to the junta were repressed, and protest songs, which were played and circulated in a clandestine manner. In the late 1980s and after the return of democracy in the 1990s, new musical bands like La Ley, Los Tres and Los Prisioneros, began to appear. (See Music of Chile.)

Poetry and Literature

Chileans call their country País de Poetas ("land of poets"). The country has produced two Nobel Literature laureates: Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda. Other major poets include: Pedro Prado, Vicente Huidobro, Pablo de Rokha, Juvencio Valle, Rosamel del Valle, Maximiliano Ilich Prieto, Gonzalo Rojas, Jorge Teillier, Enrique Lihn and Nicanor Parra. The major novelist and short story writer of the 20th century was probably Manuel Rojas, although not as well known outside of the country. Isabel Allende, another novelist, has achieved worldwide success with her stories of magic realism in Latin America, probably reaching a larger audience than any other Chilean prose writer. Jorge Edwards, José Donoso and Roberto Bolaño are also notable novelists.

Filmmaking

Local film production in Chile is small, although it has been growing lately. Important filmmakers include: Raúl Ruiz (Palomita blanca), Miguel Littin (El chacal de Nahueltoro), Silvio Caiozzi (Julio comienza en julio), Ricardo Larraín (La frontera), Andrés Wood (Machuca), Alejandro Jodorowsky and Marcelo Ferrari ("Sub Terra").

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Culture_of_Chile