Biography:

Pedro Aquiles Messone Rivas ( Temuco , June 6 , 1936 – Santiago de Chile , June 1 , 2023 ) ^1 2 was a Chilean folklorist .

Childhood

When his father, a department store manager, asked for a transfer, his family moved to Valparaíso . For this reason, the singer defined himself as “a porteño born in Temuco”, and his extensive work in the Chilean capital never took away his nostalgia for Valparaíso, where he grew up and studied.

His family spent summers in the countryside, a world that Messone enjoyed during his childhood and whose codes would become a natural part of his work.

Beginnings in music

During his studies in Valparaíso, he forged friendships with some people who would motivate him to enter the world of music, such as Luis Urquidi , with whom he shared a great interest in jazz and Latin folklore, on which they carried out intense research that would instruct him. to be able to start as a professional. His subsequent work in the group Los Cuatro Cuartos responded to that same desire to contextualize Chilean music in a wide world of international references.

Pedro Messone moved to Santiago when he was already part of Los Cuatro Cuartos, but without any expectation of one day making a living from music. Like his colleagues, he initially maintained the group as a serious but non-professional hobby, in which he occupied himself in the spare time left by successive buying and selling jobs. As Los Cuatro Cuartos began to reap its first successes in radio audiences, Messone also became interested in the world of theater.

Messone was getting closer and closer to acting. She thus received an invitation to join the role of a shoeshine boy in La pérgola de las flores that Eugenio Guzmán developed in the first half of the 1960s together with the Teatro Ensayo of the Catholic University . His acting enthusiasm did not interrupt his musical work, until the growing demands of both activities forced him to opt for one of them.

In 1964, the company of which Messone was a part received an invitation from the Mexican government to present La pergola de las flores on the main stages of that country. Los Cuatro Cuartos raised his intention to take time away from the country, but the permission became more of a discussion between the two and, ultimately, ended with Messone’s departure from the group. Despite this, the singer never regretted prioritizing his solo development, and over time he was even able to repair his relationship with them.

Messone received offers to stay in Mexico and develop a career there, but he chose to return to Santiago and persist in his work with local folklore. She found herself back with Sergio Sauvalle , who had just left Los Huasos Quincheros and kept a song that that group had not been interested in, but that he imagined very well in the voice of Messone. This song was called « El corralero ».

Messone listened to her, immediately distinguished her value, and proposed putting together a group with other vocalists, for which she summoned the outstanding Rolando Alarcón , José Luis Hernández and Renato Lederman. Thus, Los de Las Condes was born, whose first important stage was the 1965 Viña Festival . His interpretation for “El corralero” could not surpass “Mano nortina”, which Los Cuatro Cuartos had brought and which took first place. Despite this, they received a very peculiar consolation prize. The same night as the award ceremony, Chino Urquidi approached Messone and told him the following: “They didn’t win, but it will be their song that transcends.” There is no doubt now about the popularity of “El corralero”.

Los de Las Condes was a short-lived group (less than a year) that bequeathed six 45 rpm singles for the RCA label , and one LP.

In 1966, he starred in the series Haras La Revoltosa on Channel 13, along with Malú Gatica and Luis Urquidi . 3

Soloist

The launch of Pedro Messone as a soloist was an almost inevitable step, not so much because of the singer’s strategy but because of the sequence that his career had led until then. His popularity was, at that point, almost that of a pop star, supported in part by his image and the insistence of the entertainment press of the time to link him to the manners of a leading man. His sentimental companions found their way onto the pages of Ritmo magazine , whose female readers forced the publication to share the 1966 “Gato de Oro” (a prize that measured the popularity of local figures) between Messone and the famous Pollo Fuentes .

The RCA label had already warned Messone that his next publication should be that of a soloist. But it was missing to find a song that would support that new facet. As so many times before in his career, the singer knew how to make circumstances play in his favor. In an informal conversation with her friend De ella Paz Undurraga , she told her about a song by Willy Bascuñán that Los Cuatro Cuartos had discarded, and that she could accommodate him for his next album. It was called The Lonesome .

El solitario was Pedro Messone’s first album as a soloist. It was published at the end of 1966 and in addition to the previously mentioned theme by Bascuñán, it included two other titles that would achieve great success: “Pa’ mar adentro” and “El ovejero”. He later recorded “El cigarrito” by Víctor Jara , a song that until then no one had recorded. Shortly after, Jara himself included it in his debut album, extending the version that has become a classic.

Months after that publication, a new partnership with Rolando Alarcón brought the pericona “Niña, sube a la lancha” to the 1967 Viña Festival , third place in that year’s folkloric competition. It was the month of February and Messone received in the dressing room the surprising news of the suicide of Violeta Parra , with whom the singer had come to forge a deep friendship and who not a few confused with an improbable romance about which legends are woven to this day, without major basis. 1

The New Song and politics

At the time of the rise of Popular Unity , Messone made it clear that he was not committed to politics, a fact that marked his career. His sympathy for the military dictatorship is well known , and in 1988 he participated in the campaign for the “Yes” option in the 1988 plebiscite that defined the continuity of Augusto Pinochet in power. 1

In 1992 he ran as a councilor for the Buin commune representing the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), without being elected, ¹ and in 2012 he was in charge of culture for the group that sought to revive the Avanzada Nacional political party , which had been in force in the 1980s . 4

Last years

Currently, he no longer performed on large stages, his concerts were sporadic, since his vocal range began to decline.

He was recurring at Quinta Vergara as part of the jury. Her last triumph on that stage was the one she obtained in 1982 with the song “La tejedora” by Sandra Ramírez. Five years later, he performed again with a song co-written with Juan Castillo (“My girl and I”), and in 2000 he defended “La tejedora” in the competition for the best song in the history of the Festival (where the record that of the ten songs summoned to the folkloric section, five had been originally performed by Messone).

He died on June 1, 2023 at the Hospital del Salvador in Santiago de Chile. 2

Credits:

Wikipedia