The director of CMUS, Christian Spencer, wrote the academic article “Music, Popular Culture, and Imagination: Horacio Salinas and the Folk-Rooted Guitar” in volume 31 of the Brazilian journal Opus. The text is part of the dossier “Histories, Agencies, and Appropriations of the Guitar in Latin America,” coordinated by Fernando Elías Llanos (of the Federal University of Goiás (EMAC, Brazil)) and Christian Spencer himself. He notes that “the dossier contains 13 articles from 5 different countries focusing on the organology, history, social impact, experimentalism, and practices associated with the guitar in Latin America over the last 100 years. The objective of the dossier was to highlight the guitar’s contribution to cultural development in Latin American countries and to update the debate on its impact and transformative perspectives.”

The article’s abstract reads as follows: “This text addresses the development of ‘folk-rooted guitar’ in Chile through the life and work of composer and guitarist Horacio Salinas Álvarez (b. 1951). The objective is to demonstrate that the category ‘folk-rooted guitar’ should be considered a term in its own right, separate from other guitar traditions, by virtue of its trajectory, repertoire, performance style, discography, and time-line. To this end, I analyze and redefine the concept of folk-rooted based on literature and Salinas’s own ideas. The article traces a brief history of ‘Chilean popular guitar’ and delineates the historical characteristics of ‘folk-rooted guitar’ in its individual and collective formats. To construct the latter, I systematize its practice into five elements (instruments, imagination, emotions, international sensibility, and experimentation with direct musical language), using the album Imaginación, recorded by Inti-Illimani, as an almost paradigmatic example.” 1984. The text has five parts. The first traces a brief history of the “Chilean folk guitar.” The second distinguishes between group and solo playing, highlighting the idea of ​​the “performative life of the performer.” The third describes the characteristics of the “folk-rooted guitar” and the need to consider it as an independent musical category. The fourth analyzes the album Imaginación, and the fifth offers some conclusions that seek to solidify some of the points of view presented from a cultural perspective, noting in passing the implications and unique aspects of the use of this concept in musical history.