“I felt as if I were invincible, as if we were invincible”. Music and collective action in the Chilean mobilizations of October 2019

This article reflects upon the articulations of music and social movements in the context of the October 2019 social protest in Chile. Specifically, we have taken on two songs that have been permanently present in the recent social uprisings: “El derecho de vivir en paz” by Victor Jara, and “El baile de los que sobran” by Los Prisioneros. We propose an approach to these songs and how they are related to collective action; the proposed approach considers the cultural–historical contexts of each song, as well as the ethnographic material collected during the uprisings. To this end, we reviewed the value that social movements studies have assigned to music; subsequently, we analyze the songs from a sociological perspective that entails both the individual and the collective dimensions of the musical experience. The underlying thesis is that music not only “reflects” or “accompanies” the social, but that it also has the power to produce it.