Canciones de las Brigadas Internacionales

War memorials, sites of remembrance, are traditionally made of stone or steel. In the United States, the Spanish Civil War has been memorialized in rituals of song. American volunteers in Spain learned songs during the war against Franco and have sung them at annual meetings and ceremonies since they started to come home in 1937. Some songs are part of their specific memories of the war; they first learned them and sang them in Spain. Other songs associated with the conflict were learned back home, when the veterans began to gather and share stories and experiences. Over the years, the veterans were joined at their commemorative gatherings by their families, friends, and a younger generation of supporters, who became familiar with the songs from the veterans, either at the annual events themselves or through recordings. The songs have been passed to new generations and are now an integral part of this commemorative performance culture. Period artifacts with emotional and lyrical content evoking specific associations with the war, its time, and its ideals, the songs have come to represent the conflict. Within the commemorative context, they can be primary triggers of radical nostalgia.

At the annual events, songs are always a centerpiece; emotional touchstones. With mostly foreign lyrics reintoning historical signifiers set to irresistible melodies, the ritualized singing and re-singing of these songs invokes the Spanish Civil War and its historical moment through their own very particular language. The music helps create a sacred space, and because of each body's thorough engagement in the physical act of singing, those present “learn” the war and are led into its time in a way they could not at more conventional memorial sites. They physically acquire these musical texts in much the same way as the volunteers did in Spain, mastering them through repetition, and carry them from then on as embodied artifacts. If the veterans want to pass on the political ideals that drew them to Spain, the songs bear some of that history.