Since the 1960s, singer and guitarist Suni Paz has been one of the best-known purveyors of “nueva canción” or “new song,” a Latin American movement that employed folk music to push for social change. After emigrating from her native Argentina to California and completing her graduate studies, Suni began to perform in schools, at United Farm Workers’ rallies, and was soon recording with Folkways Records. She is a 2020 NEA National Heritage Fellow. Suni told us about her beginnings in music and song.
Suni Paz: My father, who doesn’t play the guitar, felt sorry for me because I had the guitar in my hands, and I couldn’t do anything. I was just struggling and struggling, and he said, “Look, I don't know how to play guitar, but I’m going to teach you three chords that I know. Do you want to learn them?” I said “Yeah!” So, he taught me three chords. With those three chords, I started playing everything in the world. I played every bolero I could with three chords. Then I began going to the peñas folklóricas, folk gatherings, with my mom, and we were going there to dance and also sometimes we sang, but I was seeing very closely the way the musicians were playing, and I would struggle imitating them. So, one of the musicians saw me, he came and he showed me and he taught me, and that way I was improving every time I went to the peñas I came home with a new song with new chords.
SP: In Chile, I performed a lot at parties with my husband. So we were singing, that was my sort of performance. And then I did a program for the University of Chile for the TV, and I said “I’m going to do it only if I can sing and talk only about Atahualpa Yupanqui.” He was my idol. But Atahualpa Yupanqui was of indigenous descent. He was a collector of folk songs, but also, he wrote his own songs, and his own songs paint a portrait of the countryside of the Andes, of the struggles of people there. To me, it was opening the eyes to the world. I became very political eventually because of him because I saw the plight of the workingman and of the farm worker that was mistreated, looked down, and they were putting the food on our tables. We owe our health and our life to them. They were treated like they were no one and that was very painful to me. So, when I came to the United States, I met Cesar Chavez and the farm workers, and I became a singer for their cause.
SP: I stayed from ’60 to ’65 in Chile, and in ’65, I had to leave because there was Communist Revolution. I could see that very clearly. So, when I came to the United States, started singing for the children, I said, “These children have to see their world who they are, how important they are, how vital their function in this society,” and I began finding songs, and when I didn’t have them, I had to write them. I would write the songs for them. So they would see themselves with strength and power. So thus started my career as a singer first in school.
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