Margot Loyola

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Margot Loyola (born 1918, Linares, Chile) is a famous musician, folk singer and researcher of the folklore of her country and, in general, of Latin America.

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[edit] Biography

Margot has been fully active for many decades and has carried out and published an outstanding body of work dealing with musical styles and folk music and customs of all Chilean regions as well as other South American countries. She has been a devoted teacher of her art; she applies a method of research of the purest ethnographic and anthropological style, which culminates with the staging of an aesthetic form.

Margot Loyola studied piano with Rosita Renard and Elisa Gayán at the National Conservatory of Music of Chile, and song with Blanca Hauser. In 1952 she immersed herself on the research and learning of some typical Peruvian dances and musical forms, the "marinera" and the "resbalosa". This allowed her to study the origins of these dances and to characterize the similitudes between the Peruvian versions and the Chilean ones ("resfalosa" and "cueca"). Subsequently, she worked with Porfirio Vásquez, the patriarch of black music in Peru, and then, she went on to study the indigenous culture of Peru, with José Maria Arguedas.

Later on, Margot studied Argentinean and Uruguayan traditional and folk music, with Carlos Vega and Lauro Ayestarán, respectively. In 1952, she began her celebrated research on the ceremonial dances of the Chilean north, with Rogelia Perez and other musicians and groups. Margot Loyola has researched on the folklore and traditional musical styles of all the regions of Chile as well as Easter Island (a Chilean province, located in the south Pacific Ocean). She has compiled and published a great deal of valuable material obtained from her scholarly research and is regarded as an artist and researcher of great talent and authority. Among the art expressions she has researched about there have been some which were virtually rescued from oblivion and extinction by her indefatigable and intelligent work.

Margot Loyola has created a true school around the traditional songs and dances of Chile, thus becoming an effective unofficial ambassadress of the Chilean culture before the international scene.

[edit] Publications

  • "Bailes de tierra" (Earth dances), (1980)
  • "El Cachimbo", (1994).

In addition, Margot's artistic activities have given origin to several videos, LPs, cassettes and CDs.

[edit] Videos

[edit] Discography

  • 14 LPs, 6 cassettes and 7 CDs, in addition to other editions in various other countries

[edit] Awards and Degrees

In 1972, Margot Loyola became a Professor of the University of Chile, and in 1998 she was made a Professor emeritus of the Catholic University of Valparaíso. She was awarded the coveted (Chilean) National Prize of Art (mention in Music) in 1994 and the "Premio a lo Chileno" in 2001.