Patricio Manns Died: What Was His Cause Of Death?

The singer-songwriter, one of the inescapable names of the New Chilean Song, died this morning in the cynical Bupa de Reñaca, where he was hospitalized. He was 84 years old.

Chilean music has lost one of its fundamental names. This Saturday at 9.20 in the morning, at the Bupa de Reñaca clinic, the famous singer-songwriter Patricio Manns passed away. The news was confirmed by his representative Marcel Dupin.

“Patricio left us at 9.20 am accompanied by his daughter, he had been hospitalized for a month and had a reserved diagnosis because he had not had a positive recovery,” he said in a talk with CNN Chile.

In September 2020, Manns was admitted to the same hospital due to complications from his diabetes. During those days, and in the same place, his wife Alejandra Lastra, who died of cancer, was hospitalized.

Legend of the New Chilean Song

Manns, was one of the fundamental figures of the New Chilean Song, a member of a generation in which notable names participated, congregated in the legendary Peña de los Parra. “The movement was born in the Peña de Carmen 340, later known as the Peña de los Parra,” Manns assured Culto in 2019. That was in April 1965. The members were Isabel and Ángel Parra, Rolando Alarcón and Víctor Jara ”.

Born in August 1947 in the Nacimiento commune, Manns made a name for himself thanks to his “Up in the Cordillera”, a composition based on the stories of muleteers he met in the Bio Bío mountain range. Before music he also worked as a radio journalist until his transfer to Santiago where he joined Channel 9 of the University of Chile,

«Ricardo García arrived one day with a radio program on radio Balmaceda, where I worked as a journalist. There I showed him his response to a letter that I had written to him from Chiloé a few years before. In it I asked him what requirements were required for me to develop a musical career. His response was very cordial, but he warned me to prepare for a myriad of difficulties. He was very excited about the story. A few years later I brought him my first album, “Arriba en la cordillera” and it was widely distributed, ”he recalled in 2019.

With his “Elegy for a Red Girl”, Manns participated in the First Festival of the New Chilean Song, in 1969, won by Víctor Jara together with Quilpayún. In 1971 he recorded his homonymous album, one of the most important of his career, in which he had the collaboration of figures of the time such as Luis Advis, Inti Illimani and Los Blops.

The musician was exiled after the military coup of 1973. In the years outside the country -in Cuba and France- he became associated with the song of exile, for example with Inti Illimani -from the work with Horacio Salinas came the classic «Samba Lando» – and also collaborated with activities for the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front. In those days he also developed his facet as a writer.

Upon his return to the country, after 27 years, he maintained an active career in which he alternated record and literary publications, on the shores of the sea in Concón. He offered two memorable shows at the Teletón Theater and another at the former Chile Stadium and also resumed his ties with Inti Illimani on the album Amar de Nuevo (1998). In recent years, health complications and the pandemic have taken him away from the stage.

Amelia Warner writes all the Latest Articles. She mostly covers Entertainment topics, but at times loves to write about movie reviews as well.

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