El Canto Necesario (Necessary Song) is the Venezuelan name for socially conscious music more commonly called Nueva Canción (New Song) in most of Latin America. Venezuela has produced many songs protesting unjust conditions and recounting struggles to remedy them, but in the 1960s a new wave of singers and songwriters developed. This outpouring coincided with the upsurge of socially engaged compositions elsewhere in Latin America.

The towering figure within this movement is singer-songwriter Alí Primera (Rafael Sebastián Primera Rosell, 1942-1985.) Alí grew up dirt-poor in the dry central northern Falcón state. He began singing in universities, where his impressive performances eventually led to a full-time musical career and earned him the title “El Cantor del Pueblo,” The People’s Singer. His lyrics sharply underscored the hypocrisy of a country whose petroleum wealth was siphoned off by the wealthiest of the population, leaving so many to deprivation. The establishment strongly repressed Alí’s music. Several attempts were made on his and his family’s life, and he died in a car crash some consider suspicious. His music was officially and unofficially banned from the radio, but he cultivated relationships with some open-minded radio DJs. Most of all he constantly toured throughout the country. Alí eventually created the record label Cigarrón (Big Cigar) since commercial labels refused to sign him. One of his songs, “Las Casas (or Techos) de Cartón,” The Houses (or Roofs) of Cardboard, describes the misery of immigrants from the countryside in the slums of Caracas. It remains well known throughout Latin America, for example Mexican pop star Marco Antonio Solís’s hit version.

With Alí’s passing the Canto Necesario movement receded, but in the late 1990s his music began to circulate again. In the early 2000s Alí Primera’s music achieved airtime on community radio stations, bootleg CDs of his music proliferated, and for a time his music may have achieved more exposure than during his lifetime.