Alturas de Machu Picchu is the seventh studio album by the Chilean band Los Jaivas, released in 1981, and probably the most important and popular of all his discography. In it, the band use the poem by Pablo Neruda, of the same title, published in his book Canto General, 1950. In this poem, the poet sings, captivated by the grandeur of human creation that he witnesses in the ruins of Machu Picchu in Perú, about the glorious indigenous past of Latin America, human misery, death and pain that the majesty often results in those who forged. The poem is one of the most significant of Neruda's poetry, and music composition from The Jaivas has been regarded as brilliant and faithful to the original content of the work.
