(b San Carlos, Nuble, 4 October 1917; d Santiago, 5 February 1967). Chilean traditional singer, collector, cantautor (singer-songwriter), poet and artist. Parra inherited a folkloric repertory from her parents, singing with members of her family in circuses, theatres and bars in Santiago. From 1953 she dedicated her life to the subject of Chilean folklore: collecting, broadcasting on radio, recording and teaching. During the periods 1954–6 and 1961–4 she lived in France, based in Paris, performing in festivals, theatres, clubs, radio and television and recording Chilean music. In 1964 her art was exhibited at the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Decoratifs. On her return to Chile she installed a tent in a suburb of Santiago called La Reina, and here she lived and worked with Chilean popular culture, performing until her premature death by suicide.
With intuitive and powerful talent, Parra consciously introduced an original aesthetic to popular urban song, bringing together distinctive aspects of different Latin American traditions in a manner which could be described as a kind of ‘primitivism’, while at the same time developing literary, musical and performing aspects of the tradition, establishing her own influential models of popular Chilean musics during the 1960s. She had seminal influence on the emerging, groundbreaking generation who were to forge Chile’s nueva canción (new song) tradition, including her own children Angel and Isabel Parra, Víctor Jara, Patricio Manns and the groups Inti Illimani and Quilapayún, whose music was to play an integral part in the political and social life of 20th-century Chile from the late 1960s onwards; as well as on the repertory of other innovative popular musicians.
Of her 277 works registered with the Chilean Performing Rights Society the following, recorded for Odeon, France, can be singled out: Casamiento de negros (1953), La jardinera (1960), Arriba quemando el sol (1965), La carta (c1965), La pericona se ha muerto (1966); as can Cantores que reflexionan, El rin del angelito, Gracias de la vida, Run Run se fue pa’l norte and Volver a los diecisiete, recorded in 1966 for RCA Victor, Chile, issued as part of her final recording Las últimas composiciones. Self-taught and self-motivated, she is considered one of the key Latin American folklorists and popular musicians of the 20th century.
V. Parra: Cantos folklóricos Chilenos (Santiago, 1979)
B. Subercaseaux et al: Gracias a la vida, Violeta Parra, testimonio (Santiago, 1982)
I. Parra: El libro mayor de Violeta Parra (Madrid, 1985)
P. Manns: Violeta Parra, la guitarra indócil (Concepción, Chile, 1986)
M. Agosín and I. Dolz: Violeta Parra o la expresión inefable, un analisis crítico de su poesía, prosa y pintura (Santiago, 1992)
Cantos de Chile, Le Chant du Monde (1956)
La cueca presentada por Violeta Parra, Odeon LDC 36038 (1957)
Recordando a Chile, canciones de Violeta Parra, Odeon SLDC 36533 (1965)
Las últimas composiciones de Violeta Parra, RCA Victor CML 2456 (1966)
JUAN PABLO GONZALEZ