Violeta Parra

In the various polls held on the subject, "Las últimas composiciones de Violeta Parra" is usually cited as the greatest Chilean record of all time (Rolling Stone Chile in 2008, Digital Dream Door in 2013): it's not our aim here to endorse or dispute this claim, since music isn't something that can be rigidly ranked, but these results undoubtedly attest to the scale of the myth surrounding the album and its author.

Violeta Parra's biography prior to the album's release is extremely complex and has already been covered excellently by a wealth of studies (researcher Stefano Gavagnin gathered an extensive bibliography in the essay "Como nací pat'e perro") and artistic portrayals (the 2011 film "Violeta se fue a los cielos", directed by Andrés Wood, is well worth watching). This article will focus specifically on the album, referencing biographical elements only insofar as they shaped its content.

The record came out in November 1966, three months before Parra's suicide: the title, originally meant simply as "the most recent compositions", was later seen as a premonition, and the word "last" took on a literal, final meaning.

The sessions featured Alberto Zapicán (backing vocals and percussion), a Uruguayan musician and Parra's partner in the final months of her life, as well as the singer's two children, Ángel (guitar) and Isabel (percussion).

The cover consists of an iconic black-and-white photo of Parra holding a charango. [note 1]

The general public remembers the record mainly for two songs that became standards of Latin American songwriting, covered over the years by the most disparate artists: "Gracias a la vida" (adapted into Italian by Gabriella Ferri in 1974) and "Volver a los 17".

Great songs are irreplaceable magnets of identity for generations and entire peoples. I remember very well, for instance, during the hard days of the military governments that devastated our continent, how singing "Gracias a la vida" or "Volver a los 17" together restored us to the freshness, the invincible strength of our people, and made us be reborn and rise up […] But when we think of the finest songs by Violeta Parra, by Silvio Rodríguez, of lines like “the little moss on the stone” or “the unicorn with the indigo horn“, I believe we can count on works of a higher endurance, and we can trust the youth who claim those lyrics, who have sung them and go on hailing them in the great squares of civic festivals.

(Ivonne Bordelois, Argentine essayist and linguist)

The two songs share a fairly similar cadence, built on a ternary base. "Gracias a la vida" is defined by the dry strums of the charango, accompanied by an arpeggiated guitar and the rhythmic backing of a bombo (a drum typical of Andean music). "Volver a los 17", by contrast, employs a Venezuelan cuatro (a four-stringed instrument belonging to the family of old Spanish guitars and guitarillas).

In Violeta's voice you can hear that characteristic, sentimental glissando stretching out the second-to-last vowel of certain words, as well as the typical Chilean pronunciation - different from that of other trans-Andean peoples - which tends to soften the "t" and the "r".

As for the lyrics, in both songs the author reflects on the nobility and worth of simplicity and immediacy, with an underlying ecumenical spirit (one might draw a parallel with the "Odas elementales" by her fellow countryman, the poet Pablo Neruda). In her poetry, this Parra conveys and celebrates the wonder of existence without shying away from the inevitable experience of pain: it's impossible to attain the delight of creation without absorbing and metabolizing its essence.

"Gracias a la vida" is deeply conciliatory and yet, at the same time, reveals a fatal outcome perhaps already foreseen:

Thanks to life, which has given me so much,

it gave me two beams of light, which when I open them

I clearly distinguish black from white

and high in the sky, its starry backdrop

and among the multitudes, the man I love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much,

it gave me hearing, which in all its range

records night and day, crickets and canaries,

hammers, turbines, barking dogs, rainstorms

and the voice, so tender, of my beloved.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much,

it gave me sound and the alphabet,

and with them the words I think and speak,

mother, friend, brother and light illuminating

the path of the soul of the one I love.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much,

it gave me the march of my tired feet

with them, through cities and puddles,

beaches and deserts, mountains and plains

and your house, your street and your patio.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much,

it gave me the heart, which shakes its own frame

when I look at the fruit of the human brain,

when I look at good, so far from evil,

when I look into the depths of your clear eyes.

Thanks to life, which has given me so much,

it gave me laughter and it gave me tears

and so I can tell joy from dismay,

the two materials that make up my song

and your song, which is the same song

and everyone's song, which is my own song.

“Volver a los 17” is a declaration of love for the goodness of the universe, imbued with a deliberate spirit of rediscovery and emotional adolescence (that “seventeen” alluded to in the title), set against the exhausting toll of passing time:

Returning to seventeen

after having lived a century

is like deciphering signs

without being a learned scholar.

Suddenly becoming again

as fragile as a moment,

to feel deeply

like a child before God,

that's what I feel

in this fertile instant.

It tangles, it tangles

like ivy on a wall

and it's sprouting, sprouting

like a little moss on stone.

My step backward

while yours moves forward,

the arc of the covenant

has pierced my nest

with all its coloring,

it has walked through my veins

and even the harsh chains

with which fate binds us

they're like a fine diamond

that lights up my serene soul.

What feeling can do,

wisdom is not able to do,

nor the clearest procedure,

nor the broadest thought.

Everything changes in an instant

like a benevolent magician,

it gently draws us away

from grudges and violence,

only love, with its science,

makes us so innocent.

Love is a whirlwind

of original purity,

even the fiercest beast

whispers its sweet trill

stops pilgrims in their tracks

sets prisoners free

love with its striving

turns the old man into a child

and to the wicked, affection alone

makes him pure and sincere

the window thrown wide open

opened as if by magic

love came in with its cloak

like a mild morning

at the sound of its lovely wake-up call

it made the jasmine bloom

flying like a seraph

to the sky it fastened earrings

and my seventeen years

were converted by the cherub.

(Note: “The arc of the covenants” refers to the appearance of the rainbow in the Book of "Genesis", as a symbol and seal of the new pact between man, earth and God, after the flood).

The rest of the setlist is made up of cult tracks that, unlike the two already mentioned, never reached the wider public, but became touchstones among artists, intellectuals and music enthusiasts.

“Cantores que reflexionan” is a poem built on octosyllabic verses, with twelve lines in crossed rhyme arranged in palindromic form (ABBACDDCABBA). The rhythm, indicated on the sleeve as refalosa, corresponds to an old creole dance whose name comes from the sliding, grazing movement of the feet (refalar = to slide): marked by the woman's exaggerated swaying hips, it was considered particularly controversial in a conservative 19th-century society.

The lyric can be read as a kind of parable, more motivational than admonitory, addressed to singers and troubadours, urging them to give up hollow success and personal flattery, and to stop lulling the conscience of their people, to whom they owe instead the depiction of reality and the pursuit of truth.

It's worth noting how, despite Parra's clear and active political stance, her poems repeatedly draw on citations and references to the Bible and Christianity (in this case, the selling of Jesus by Judas Iscariot is invoked). As far as one can tell, this device carries no ironic or satirical intent, but draws on a wellspring of images and expressions of faith and hope that undeniably and legitimately belong to the most genuine popular tradition.

In the prison of anguish

a star meditates aloud,

moans and trembles like a lion,

as if it wished to flee.

Where does your steed come from,

with that overwhelming splendor?

That carmine seems false

that emanates from your very being!

"It comes from Satan's kingdom",

all his blood answered,

"burn the tree of love,

leave ashes in your wake".

He is a prisoner of pleasure

and a servant of vanity,

he seeks the light of truth,

but lies lie at his feet.

Glory stretches out its stubborn net

and imprisons his heart

in the silences of his voice

which is drowning even against its will.

The artificial spotlight

has blinded his reason.

Give him your hand, friend Sun,

in his tremendous darkness!

What is it that sings, I wonder.

Impossible to answer.

The bee is vain without its honey,

the scythe is vain without a reaper.

Is money some kind of light

for eyes that cannot see?

"Thirty pieces of silver and a cross",

answers the echo of Israel.

Where does your lie come from,

and where does your truth begin?

Your gaze seems like a joke,

your laughter like weeping!

And his conscience finally said:

“Sing to man in his pain,

in his misery and in his sweat,

and in his reason for existing”.

When from the depths of his being

understanding spoke to him thus,

a new wine sweetened

the bitterness of his gall.

Today his song is a hoe

that cuts furrows into living,

toward justice at its very root,

and into the flow of his voice.

In his divine understanding,

the singer radiated light.

“Pupila de águila” is a huayno, a style from the central Andean region, in what is now Peru. It is played in binary two-four time and is typically characterized by the alternation of a quarter note with two eighth notes. It was originally sung in Quechua or Aymara (native languages).

The lyrics, a metaphor for the fleeting nature of human relationships, are among the most dramatic in the collection:

A little bird came to rest beneath my tree,

it was night, I couldn't see its slight shape,

it lamented that a cage had taken it prisoner

and that its feathers, one by one, had been torn away.

I wanted to heal it with my love, but the little bird

stayed silent as a tomb until dawn.

The clearings of a beautiful day arrive, the wind shook

every branch of my little tree and there I realized

that the little bird had a soul more wounded than mine

and through the cracks that bled out its life, it escaped.

In its aching throat its heart weeps

I opened up my song to it

and with my vielle the staff played it back.

It was already getting better, already smiling thanks to my medicine

when one evening a letter arrived from its old cage.

On my tree, black and purple flowers bloomed

because the courier came to fetch it, my eyes were welling with tears.

He disappears, leaves me with all his bitterness,

proudly carries off my tenderest flower, my sun and my moon.

At the moment of his leaving, around my neck a necklace

he left behind, forgotten, and like Aladdin, I began to rub it.

Minutes pass, hours pass, and a whole lifetime passes,

by the miracle of that jewel I saw him return

with more wounds, with more silence and with long claws.

His “good morning!” tears at my skin with bitter spite.

A bird that arrives from nowhere and doesn't know where it's going

and prisoner of its own flight, a wicked bird it shall be.

Wicked bird, sows discord, drinks, falls silent and leaves,

closes your bridge, closes your song, throws the key into the sea.

A little bird came crying, I wanted to console it

I brushed his eyes with a handkerchief, eagle's pupil.

“Run Run se fue pal norte” is dedicated to the end of the relationship with French anthropologist Gilbert Favre, the greatest love of Parra's life. Run Run, the nickname the singer had given her partner, comes from the name of a traditional toy found throughout Latin America, made up of a solid disc with two holes equidistant from the center (usually a button), through which a string is threaded and looped, producing a buzzing sound when pulled taut.

It's the song where the blending of European Renaissance polyphony with the cadences of local native music — a hallmark of the colonial period — comes through most clearly. The harmonic potential latent in the sparse instrumentation of the original (just a charango, nothing else) was later developed in dozens of versions performed by other artists (Inti Illimani recorded one version in 1971 and another in 1974, the latter during their Italian exile; the Jaivas gave it an instrumental rendition in 1984).

In a chariot of oblivion

before dawn

from a station of time

determined to leave.

Run Run has gone north,

I don't know when he'll return.

He'll come back for the birthday

of our loneliness.

Three days later, a letter

in coral-colored handwriting

tells me his journey

keeps stretching on and on.

Lascia Antofagasta

senza dare un segno

e racconta un’avventura

che mi accingo a sillabare.

Ahi, ahi, ahi, povera me.

In mezzo alla folla

dovette affrontare

un trasbordo per colpa

dell’ultimo uragano.

Su un ponte spezzato

vicino a Vallenar,

con una croce sulla spalla,

Run Run dovette attraversare.

Run Run continuò il suo viaggio

arrivò a Tamarugal

sitting on a stone

he began to ramble:

that yes, that no, that this, that that,

that never, that then,

that life is a lie,

that death is truth.

The fact is he began

dragging along a satchel,

he pulled out paper and ink

and a memory, who knows.

Without pain, nor joy,

without glory, nor pity,

without anger, nor bitterness

without gall, nor freedom.

Empty as the hole

of the earthly world,

Run Run sent his letter

just to send it, and nothing more.

Run Run went north,

I stayed in the south

an abyss in between,

with neither music nor light.

The calendar loosens

between the wheels of the train,

the numbers of the year

on the edge of the platform.

The more the wheels turn,

the more clouds in the month,

the longer the tracks,

the more bitter the future,

Run Run went north,

nothing to be done,

that's apparently just how life is.

Thorns of Israel,

crucified love,

crowns of contempt,

nails of martyrdom,

vinegar and gall.

“Maldigo del alto cielo” is listed on the sleeve as a sirilla, an old Chilean dance descended from the Spanish seguidilla. The lyrics go well beyond a critique of the prevailing political system or the hypocrisy of the middle and upper classes: the song aims its ferocity at all of creation, including those very same unspoiled wonders celebrated elsewhere in this same work.

In its imagery and iconoclastic spirit, it almost recalls Cecco Angiolieri's “S'i' fosse foco”: what proves more interesting, though, is how both the social critique and the broader existential one converge, in the final line, into a curse against a single man (plausibly Favre), whose betrayal brings down the equilibrium of that fragile ideological and emotional universe.

I curse the height of the sky,

the star and its reflection.

I curse the emerald

sparkles of the stream.

I curse from beneath the ground

the stone and its outline.

I curse the fire of the oven

for my soul is in mourning.

I curse the statutes

of time with its embarrassments.

How great will my sorrow be?

I curse the mountain range

of the Andes and the coast.

I curse any narrow

and long strip of land, [that is: Chile]

peace as well as war,

the frank and the fickle.

I curse the perfumery

for my desire is dead,

I curse everything that is true,

and the false along with the doubtful.

I curse the spring

with its gardens in bloom

and autumn's colour

I truly curse,

the passing cloud

I curse it so much,

such is my dismay.

I curse the whole winter

and the sincere summer.

I curse the profane and the sacred

I curse the solitary

figure of the flag.

I curse any emblem,

the Venus and the araucaria,

the canary's trill,

the cosmos and its planets,

the earth and all its cracks,

because a sorrow afflicts me.

I curse the vast sea,

its harbors and its coves.

Great will be my sorrow.

I curse the moon and the landscape,

the valleys and the deserts.

I curse the dead, one by one,

and every living soul, from king to page,

the bird and its plumage.

I curse in cold blood

the breezes, the sacristies,

because a sorrow afflicts me.

I curse the word love

with all its witchcraft.

Finally I curse the white,

the black along with the yellow,

bishops and altar boys

ministers and preachers.

I curse them singing

the free man and the prisoner,

the sweet one and the quarrelsome one

To them I offer my curse

in Greek and in Spanish,

because of a traitor.

“Cueca de los poetas” [note 2]  is a dedication to Chilean poets, with a special mention for his brother Nicanor, indeed regarded as one of the country's most important poets.

My life, how lovely the pheasants are,

my life, how lovely the peacock is,

but my life, lovelier still are the poems,

the life of Gabriela Mistral.

Pablo de Rokha is good,

but Vicente [Huidobro]

is worth twice, three times as much,

so people say.

People do say, yes,

there's no doubt

that the strongest one is called

Pablo Neruda.

But run, because Nicanor Parra

is catching up with you.

“Mazúrquica modérnica”, as the title suggests, is a mazurka played on solo charango alone. The song takes its cue from a children's game in which words are invented by altering real ones, as a way of saying without saying, or of dodging the consequences of a more explicit statement. The songwriter borrows this playful device to sidestep direct allusions and take part, with irony, in the debate raging at the time over how music could have an impact on the country's social sphere.

Several personiche have askedic me

whether dangericous for the massich

are the protestic songics.

“Oh, what a childishic questionic,

only a wretch would put it that way,

I thought to myself.

To the nosy fellow I replied:

"When hunger comes knocking,

it makes a man determined and ready to fight

to defend his beans and his onions.

No regiment can stop them

if the common folk are starving."

(Note: The reference to beans conceals a double meaning; legumes were in fact commonly used as homemade tokens in betting board games, standing for the money a person had at their disposal.)

"Rin del angelito" [note 3] is dedicated to the death of newborns, a painful reality in early 20th-century Chile. The artist embraces the rural tradition of the "velorio del angelito" (wake of the little angel), a syncretic funeral rite dedicated to the death of infants. The author herself, while on tour in Poland, had lost her own infant daughter, Rosita Clara.

The sorrow of loss is expressed, in the manner of popular faith, as a love of life striving to overcome the anguish of death. The earth, with its flowers, its birds, butterflies and little fish, rises into the sky, the dwelling place of the new little angel. Yet compassion and the wish to find a glimmer of meaning in existence do not spare it from voicing bewilderment or denouncing injustice.

That dear little angel is already on his way to heaven

to pray for his grandparents, his parents and little brothers and sisters.

When the flesh dies, the soul seeks its place

inside a poppy or inside a little bird.

The earth is waiting for him with its open heart,

that's why the little angel seems to be awake.

When the flesh dies, the soul seeks its center

in the splendor of a rose or a newborn little fish.

In a little bed of earth a bell will cradle him

while the rain washes his face in the morning.

When the flesh dies, the soul seeks its target

in the mysteries of the world that opened the window to it.

The butterflies, happy to see the beautiful little angel,

stroll slowly around his cradle.

When the flesh dies, the soul goes straight

to greet the moon, and in passing, the little star.

Where has his grace gone, where has his sweetness gone?

Why does your body fall like a ripe fruit?

When the flesh dies, the soul seeks on high

the explanation of her life cut short so abruptly,

the explanation of her death, imprisoned in a tomb.

When the flesh dies, the soul remains in darkness.

"El guillatún" is a song inspired by an ancient ceremony of the Mapuche people, located in what is now Argentine and Chilean Patagonia. The rite serves as a connection with the divine, to ask for wellbeing, strengthen the community's bond, or give thanks for blessings received. Parra felt a particular connection to native peoples, being herself one-quarter indigenous through her maternal grandmother. The lyrics contain numerous words in the native language, whose meaning is indicated in brackets:

Millelche is saddened by the storm,

the wheat lies in that clay clearing,

the indios decide, after weeping,

to speak with Isidro, with God and San Juan.

The machi [shaman] walks toward the guillatún

Chamal and rebozo [garments], trailonco [headband] and kultrún [percussion]

and even the sick from their machitún [congregation]

swell the ranks of that guillatún.

The rain that falls and falls again,

the indios watch it, not knowing what to do,

they tear at their hair, they break their feet,

because the harvests will spoil.

The indios gather in an enclosure,

a song rises with the instruments,

the machi repeats the word "sun"

and the echo of the field lifts its voice.

The king of the sky listened well,

he pushed the winds into another region,

he pushed aside the clouds and then lay down,

the indios cover him with a prayer.

Above is the sky, shining blue,

below the tribe to the sound of the kultrún,

offers him its first bushel of grain

through the mouth of a bird called the ostrich.

The scent of meat and muday [a drink] can be smelled,

cinnamon, orange, quillay bark,

the party ends as dawn breaks,

they keep alive the song, the dance and the bread.

Violeta Parra spent the final months of her life in the “Tenda della Regina” (“Queen’s Tent”). It was a kind of circus tent set up on a plot of land on the outskirts of Santiago, where the artist intended to create a genuine university of folklore, with lessons by day and concerts by night. Audiences began to dwindle shortly after its opening. The project had been set up thanks to an agreement with Sergio Larraín, a prominent photographer and the only Latin American member of the Magnum Photos agency.

The tent was circular in shape, its interior covered in rushes, the same material used for the audience's chairs. The tables were made of rustic wood and the floor was bare earth. Violeta lived right next door, in a room she had built herself, with a log used as a bedside table, a bed with blankets she had made (Parra was, among other things, a skilled weaver), and musical instruments hanging on the walls.

It is generally believed that Parra's suicide was brought on by a combination of factors, including the failure of the aforementioned project, her disappointment over the end of her relationship with Favre, and the troubled relationship she had entered into in her final period with Zapicán. These are, however, mere conjectures, since the artist left no writings on the matter. Whatever the triggering cause may have been, it is certain that she suffered from depression for years.

This album stands as her testament. The cross-pollination running through its grooves fittingly closes the arc of research Parra had pursued since the very beginning of her recording career, from the mid-1950s onward, and explains her importance as a trailblazer of the so-called nueva canción chilena.

This is a school of musicians whose lyrics are often socially engaged, drawing on local folk traditions while transforming and advancing them through hybridization with other Latin American cultures. What emerged was a kind of unprecedented, continent-wide collective folklore, whereas previously the various traditional cultures had tended toward greater isolation.

The Chilean movement went on to influence other countries, each of which developed its own equivalent: the most important were Cuba's nueva trova and Argentina's nuevo cancionero.

[note 1] A chordophone of the lute family, native to the region of the Andean cordillera shared by Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru. It consists of five pairs of strings mounted on a short neck, with an armadillo shell serving as the soundbox (wood has since replaced the animal's shell over time). The customary playing techniques are: “con yemas” (fingerstyle, plucked with the fingertips), “tremolo” (similar to the technique used on mandolin, but using the tip of the index finger instead of a pick), “rasgueo” and “repiques” (full-chord strums that produce a percussive effect with the fingernails).

[note 2] The cueca is a musical genre and a mixed, freeform couple's dance. It was officially declared the “national dance of Chile”. The earliest records of its existence date back to the late 18th century. Among scholars, some argue for a Spanish origin (from the zambra or the fandango), without ruling out a fusion with Afro-American elements or, in a simplified, popular vein, with French court dances such as the rondo or the minuet. It has been suggested that, in its movement and the way the dancers approach one another, it may resemble the courtship between rooster and hen (the handkerchiefs possibly symbolizing feathers and combs).

Traditionally, it centers on geographic, historical, picaresque and romantic themes. Its rhythm is ternary (6/8 or 3/4), typically lasting under two minutes. In most cases, it makes use of a minor key.

[note 3] The rin is a dance for two couples that was originally danced on the large island of Chiloé, where it arrived in the early 19th century directly from Europe, since a similar dance exists in France known as the bourrée. However, both the rhythm and the name derive from the Celtic area of Scotland and the folk dance known as the reel.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

20/03/2024