Sonically defined by the deliberate stripping away of ornament. Baseline instrumentation: one acoustic guitar, one voice. Extensions add the quena (Andean end-blown flute), charango (small Andean lute), zampoña (panpipes), and bombo legüero (Argentine pampas drum). Rhythmically the vocabulary spans Andean saya-carnavalito 6/8, Argentine zamba-chacarera 6/8, Cuban son 2/4, and free-rhythm recitation. Vocals are diction-forward: the poetry and the politics must be audible at first hearing. Violeta Parra established the pared-down solo style; even in ensemble form (Quilapayún, Inti-Illimani) the primacy of the individual singing voice is preserved. Chorus hooks, close vocal harmonies, and other commercial pop conventions were deliberately refused — the editorial principle was 'song as poetry, not as product.'

The movement traces two founding events: the 1963 Manifiesto del Nuevo Cancionero in Mendoza, Argentina (signed by Armando Tejada Gómez, Mercedes Sosa, and others), and Violeta Parra's opening of the Peña de los Parra folk café in Santiago the same period. Parra's 1966 Gracias a la Vida became the movement's touchstone. Víctor Jara, Quilapayún, and Inti-Illimani became the cultural backbone of the Allende Popular Unity government (1970-73). The decisive rupture came on 11 September 1973 when Pinochet's coup ended the Allende government; on 16 September, Víctor Jara was tortured and shot in Santiago's Chile Stadium (later renamed the Víctor Jara Stadium). The following decade of exile forged the pan-Latin identity of the movement: Chileans, Argentines, and Uruguayans in Paris, Rome, and Stockholm; Cuban nueva trova (Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés); Venezuela's Alí Primera; Brazil's MPB. All were part of the same network.

Violeta Parra's Gracias a la Vida (1966) captures the singer's breath between phrases — the recording is intimate to the point of documentary. Víctor Jara's Te Recuerdo Amanda is a two-and-a-half-minute portrait of a factory worker running through the rain to see her husband on her five-minute break; political song becomes documentary poetry. Quilapayún's El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido stacks six male voices in near-canonical counterpoint over a simple chord progression, with a fist-raising final coda that became a global body language of solidarity. Mercedes Sosa's Alfonsina y el Mar rides a zamba-chacarera 6/8 lilt; her low-center-of-gravity voice carries the weight of the poet's suicide narrative without melodrama.

Begin with Gracias a la Vida (Parra, 1966, 4:38), then Te Recuerdo Amanda (Jara, 1969, 2:38), then El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido (Quilapayún, 1974, 2:44). Those three complete the Chilean starting triad — origin, poetics, solidarity. Continue with Alfonsina y el Mar (Sosa, 1969, 5:40) for Argentina, Ojalá (Rodríguez, 1969) for Cuba, and Casas de Cartón (Primera, 1974) for Venezuela. Recommended albums: Quilapayún's El Pueblo Unido (1974, EMI Odeón), Mercedes Sosa's Homenaje a Violeta Parra (1971), and Silvio Rodríguez's Días y Flores (1975).

Sergio Ortega composed El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido in about four hours in June 1973 — three months before Pinochet's coup. Frederic Rzewski's 1975 piano-solo work 36 Variations on 'The People United Will Never Be Defeated!' brought the song into the contemporary classical piano repertoire, a rare crossover for a Latin American political song. Víctor Jara's body was dumped in a mass grave in Santiago's General Cemetery in 1973; his widow Joan Jara secured a formal state funeral only in 2003, and in 2018 — forty-five years after his murder — a Chilean court finally convicted eight ex-officers for his killing. The movement is not settled history; its justice is still being written in real courtrooms.