After an absence of more than twenty years, Chilean group Machitún de Chile make a stirring comeback with a new album full of warmth and poetry. Drawing on the musical traditions of Latin America, their music celebrates tenderness, love, childhood and nature in all its power.
The group Machitún are a singular figure in the Latin American scene in exile. The deeply human and poetic essence of the album lies in the title: «Que la ternura nos acompañe siempre», «May tenderness always accompany us».
Born in Chile but rooted in Belgium for more than forty years, Machitún consists of brothers Roberto, Jorge and Daniel Córdova, joined by two longterm Belgian musicians: pianist Christophe Vervoort and bassist Bert Candries. Together, they create music of memory, revolt and sharing – a Crossroads between cultures, where Andean roots, jazz, committed poetry and world music meet. 50 years after the coup d’état in Chile, Machitún wonders: what can we still say after so many years of struggle, exile, and pain? Their answer is clear: what’s left is tenderness, an essential force, an intimate and universal form of resistance.
In this album, poetry continues to be a fundamental pillar. The lyrics of Pablo Neruda, Gabriela Mistraland Leandra Guzmán Brun are sung by committed voices. They call as much on collective memory as personal emotions. Machitún is a music inhabited by exile, struggle, but also by celebration. It is both anchored in the wounds of history and open to today’s world.
