Purple #46 – The Peace Issue – Playlist #1 by Matias Aguayo

Chilean-German musician musician and DJ Matias Aguayo curated the first playlist for The Peace Issue of Purple. Here is the text he wrote to go along with it:

“Making a mix around the theme of peace feels like a strange task in a world saturated in the rhetoric of war, where political and cultural identities increasingly gather around its logic.  War and genocide have often been portrayed by their perpetrators as harbingers of peace, as just struggles, or as acts of self-defense. The word “peace” is too often invoked to describe a state of harmony within a colonial or imperial order. Diving into the history of music about peace, or better, music that I can somehow relate to this subject, is an enlightening path to explore, both intellectually and emotionally.

The first songs that came to mind, because of my family history, were two by Victor Jara: most obviously “El Derecho de Vivir en Paz,” and his instrumental “La Partida.” Not all tracks in this mix refer directly to peace, some speak of resistance, displacement, or oppression, such as Los Prisioneros’ “No Necesitamos Banderas,” Falco’s “Auf der Flucht,” or Violeta Parra’s “Arauco,” beautifully interpreted by Robert Wyatt, which speaks of the suffering of Chile’s Indigenous population.

Throughout the mix I juxtaposed naive songs with darker ambient textures, and added delays and effects to songs about peace to create a dreamlike atmosphere. Instrumental pieces by Bill Evans, Alice Coltrane, and Joe Zawinul’s “Peace,” in its fragile interpretation by the radio.string.quartet.vienna, approach the subject with particular sensitivity. I could not leave out Boris Vian’s “Le déserteur,” a letter from a conscript to the president refusing to go to war and declaring that, when the gendarmes come for him, he will be unarmed. I found it deeply inspiring and it made me think about how we, as artists, can “work for peace,” as expressed in Gil Scott Heron’s sublime song of the same name.” — Matias Aguayo