At the last minute, the Olmué Huaso Festival Folk Competition had to be rescheduled. According to TVN, the decision was made as a result of a technical failure in a sound table.
Frustration and annoyance caused the last-minute rescheduling of the award ceremony of the Folk Competition of the Olmué Huaso Festival. According to TVN, the channel in charge of broadcasting the event, the decision was triggered by a technical failure in one of the event’s sound tables.
Initially, the outcome of the competition was going to take place after the Bombo Fica show, which ended after 00:30.
“We were going the same as on previous nights, but they came here, minutes before, and told us that due to a technical problem, Santaferia had to come first. That means they throw us last,” he told BioBioChile Romina Ñúñez, one of this year’s participants.
“Who is going to be watching the competition at 2 in the morning? We don’t feel the poor relatives of the festival, the neglected… It’s like an excuse to compete; those are our thoughts now, because we don’t understand. It is disrespectful… We find it extremely strange that these technical problems happen at this level, ”he added.
The prominent folklorist Jose Arturo Chavez of the group Voices of Aysen, with more than 50 years of experience, added: “These are very complex moments that are lived. I have come to Olmué many times, I have won, I have left with nothing. This time everything was going well, but we came across this ‘surprise’, which I think is not correct. The same thing happened to me in 2016. I had resigned from the festival because of this”.
“Today I do not want to harm my colleagues, and we do not want to harm the festival either, because we love the festival… I am very sorry for what is happening. So they don’t want to be. Imagine that someone is going to be rewarded, and they will be alone at the top”said.
Christian Caceresof the Braves of Talca, described the situation with a question: “The subject bothers us too much. There are artists who have more than 50 years of experience, who have toured all the festivals nationwide. Where is the respect for them?.
“We are not begging or asking for anything; we are asking to put folk music in the place it deserves. It is good that artists from other musical genres come,
but let’s give importance to folklore. There are artists who are working all year for this, for culture, so this is sad. We feel like stone guests. It’s already good, it can’t be like that, ”he commented annoyed.
From TVN, they delivered their version of the facts. “The audio table of the folkloric competition produced a technical failure and we had to reset the systemwhich forced us to configure it again with the sessions of each one of the participants”, they pointed out from the channel to BioBioChile.
“This takes a considerable time, which forced us to reverse the order of the presentations, having to advance the Santa Feria show and then the award ceremony of the competition,” they added.
The outcome and the award ceremony of the folkloric competition began after 2:05 hours. Third place went to the group Los Bravos de Talca for their song “Vivan Los Campos”, while second place went to Voces de Aysén for “Donde Vive el Agua”. The winners of the festival were the group Ankalicon “The carnival of the grandparents”.