Inti-Illimani

Biography

Inti-Illimani is Latin America’s greatest, most long-lived folkloric group ever recorded. Their regal name comes from Bolivia’s Ayamara dialect, meaning Sun-Mountain. In more than three decades of existence, Chile’s Inti-Illimani has acted as an Andean musical ambassador to the world, rendering the soulful folk idioms of their region and others with more than 30 different wind, string and percussion instruments. Rustic meets refined in graceful arrangements that always have both musical and poetic allure. Of Inti-Illimani’s seven current members, Jorge Coulón, Horacio Durán and Horacio Salinas remain the founding core of the band. Their tale begins in the spring of 1967 at Chile’s Universidad Técnica de Santiago, where the original five players (Coulón, Durán, Salinas, Pedro Yañez, and Max Berrú) were studying to be engineers. In the bubbling atmosphere of a decidedly politically left-leaning...

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