RhoDeo 1801 Roots

Hello, still working away from home, which means working with a 10 year old cheap computer with frustrating text editors and limited wifi bandwidth and a nagging patient (my mother) ah yes the things i do to keep this blog going. Looks i’ll be home for a few days (which is more than 100km away) later this week, when my sister takes over but i’m expected to return next week hmm. Anyway today’s post is about one of Chili’s stars who’s passion and creative spirit got crushed by her own fire as can happen with poetic souls...

I’m aware many of you don’t speak spanish which diminishes understanding, that said there are half a billion souls out there that do get it, anyway all the more reason to download and watch the movie...





Today’s artist is a Chilean composer, songwriter, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and visual artist. She pioneered the "Chilean New Song", the Nueva canción chilena, a renewal and a reinvention of Chilean folk music which would extend its sphere of influence outside Chile, becoming acknowledged as "The Mother of Latin American folk". In 2011 Andrés Wood directed a biopic about her, titled Violeta se fue a los cielos (Violeta Went to Heaven ).



Violeta Parra was born in San Fabián de Alico, near San Carlos, Ñuble Province, a small town in southern Chile on 4 October 1917, as Violeta del Carmen Parra Sandoval. She was a member of the prolific Parra family. Among her brothers were the notable modern poet, better known as the "anti-poet", Nicanor Parra, and fellow folklorist Roberto Parra. Her son, Ángel Parra, and her daughter, Isabel Parra, are also important figures in the development of the Nueva Canción Chilena. Their children have also mostly maintained the family's artistic traditions.

Her father was a music teacher and her mother worked on a farm, but sang and played the guitar in her spare time. Two years after Violeta's birth, the family moved to Santiago, then, two years later, to Lautaro and, finally, in 1927, to Chillán. It was in Chillán that Violeta started singing and playing the guitar, together with her siblings Hilda, Eduardo and Roberto; and soon began composing traditional Chilean music. After Parra's father died in 1929, the life circumstances of her family greatly deteriorated. Violeta and her siblings had to work to help feed the family.

In 1932, at the insistence of her brother Nicanor, Parra moved to Santiago to attend the Normal School, staying with relatives. Later, she moved back with her mother and siblings to Edison street, in the Quinta Normal district.  The Parras performed in nightclubs, such as El Tordo Azul and El Popular, in the Mapocho district, interpreting boleros, rancheras, Mexican corridos and other styles. In 1934, she met Luis Cereceda, a railway driver, whom she married four years later, and with whom she had two children, Isabel (born 1939) and Ángel (born 1943). Her husband was a militant communist. At his side, Parra became involved in the progressive movement and the Communist Party of Chile, taking part in the presidential campaign of Gabriel González Videla in 1944.

Parra began singing songs of Spanish origin, from the repertoire of the famous Argentinian singers Lolita Torres and Imperio Argentina. She sang in restaurants and, also, in theatres, calling herself Violeta de Mayo. In 1945, she appeared with her children Isabel and Angel in a Spanish show in the Casanova confectionery.

In 1948, after ten years of marriage, Parra and Luis Cereceda separated. Parra and her sister Hilda began singing together as "The Parra Sisters", and they recorded some of their work on RCA VICTOR. In 1949, Violeta met and married Luis Arce. Their daughter Carmen Luisa was born in the same year. Parra continued performing: she appeared in circuses and toured, with Hilda and with her children, throughout Argentina.  In 1952, Parra's second daughter, Rosita Clara, was born. In that same year, encouraged by her brother Nicanor, Violeta began to collect and collate authentic Chilean folk music from all over the country. She abandoned her old repertoire for folk songs, and began composing her own songs based on traditional folk forms.

Violeta gave recitals at universities, presented by Enrique Bello Cruz, a founder of several cultural magazines. Soon, Parra was invited to the "Summer School" at the University of Concepción. She was also invited to teach courses in folklore at the University of Iquique. In Valparaiso, she was presented at the Chilean-French Institute. Parra's two singles for EMI-Odeon label: "Que Pena Siente el Alma" and "Verso por el Fin del Mundo", and "Casamiento de Negros" and "Verso por Padecimiento" brought her a good measure of popularity.

Don Isaiah Angulo, a tenant farmer, taught her to play the guitarrón, a traditional Chilean guitar-like instrument with 25 strings. Along the way, Parra met Pablo Neruda, who introduced her to his friends. In 1970, he would dedicate the poem "Elegia para Cantar" to her. Between January and September 1954, Parra hosted the immensely successful radio program "Sing Violeta Parra" for Radio Chilena. The program was most often recorded in places where folk music was performed, such as her mother's restaurant in Barrancas. At the end of 1954, Parra participated in another folkloric program, for Radio Agriculture.

Violeta was invited to the World Festival of Youth and Students, in Warsaw, Poland, in July 1955. She then moved to Paris, France, where she performed at the nightclub "L'Escale" in the Quartier Latin. Meanwhile, back in Santiago her daughter Rosita Clara died (age 3). Violeta made contacts with European artists and intellectuals. Through the intervention of the anthropologist Paul Rivet she recorded at the National Sound Archive of the "Musée de l'Homme" La Sorbonne in Paris, where she left a guitarrón and tapes of her collections of Chilean folklore. She travelled to London to make recordings for EMI-Odeon and radio broadcasts from the BBC. Back in Paris, in March 1956, she recorded 16 songs for the French label "Chant du Monde" which launches its first two records with 8 songs each.

In November 1956, Violeta returned to Chile, and recorded the first LP of the series "The folklore of Chile" for the EMI Odeon label: "Violeta Parra and her guitar" which included three of her own compositions. In 1957 she followed with "La cueca" and "La tonada" (EMI Odeón) and "Composiciones de Violeta Parra".  In the following years she built her house “Casa de Palos” on Segovia Street, in the municipality of La Reina. She continued giving recitals in major cultural centers in Santiago, travelling all over the country to research, organize concerts and give lectures and workshops about folklore. She travelled north to investigate and record the religious festival "La Tirana".

Violeta Parra exerted a significant influence on Héctor Pavez and Gabriela Pizarro, who would become great performers and researchers in their own right. The product of this collaboration is evident in the play "La Celebración de la Minga" staged at the Teatro Municipal de Santiago.  She composed the music for the documentaries Wicker and Trilla, and contributed to the film Casamiento de negros, performed by Sergio Bravo. She wrote the book Cantos Folklóricos Chilenos which gathered all the research conducted so far, with photographs by Sergio Larraín and musical scores performed by Gastón Soublette (Santiago, Nascimento, 1979). She also wrote the Décimas autobiográficas, work in verse recounting her from her childhood to her trip to Europe.

She started a serious interest in ceramics, painting and arpillera embroidery. As a result of a severe hepatitis in 1959 that forced her to stay in bed, her work as a painter and arpillerista was developed greatly, so much so that the same year she exhibited her oil paintings and arpilleras at the First and also the Second Outdoor Exhibition of Fine Arts at Santiago's Parque Forestal.

On 4 October 1960, the day of her birthday, she met Swiss clarinetist Gilbert Favre with whom she became romantically involved. In 1961 she traveled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she exhibited her paintings, appeared in TV, gave recitals at the Teatro IFT and recorded an album of original songs for EMI Odeon - which was banned.


In June 1962 she returned to Santiago. With her children Isabel and Angel, and her granddaughter Tita, she embarked, with the Chilean delegation, for Finland to participate in the 8th "World Festival of Youth and Students" held in Helsinki. After touring the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy and France, Violeta Parra moved to Paris, where she performed at La Candelaria and L'Escale, in the Latin Quarter, gave recitals at the "Théâtre Des Nations" of UNESCO and performed on radio and television with her children. She then started living with Gilbert Favre in Geneva, dividing her time between France and Switzerland, where she also gave concerts, appeared in TV and exhibited her art.

In 1963 she recorded in Paris, revolutionary and peasant songs, which would be published in 1971 under the title "Songs rediscovered in Paris" She wrote the book "Popular Poetry of the Andes". The Parras took part in the concert of "L'Humanité" (official newspaper of the French Communist Party). An Argentine musician friend recorded at her home a version of "El Gavilán" ("The Hawk"), interpreted by Violeta Parra accompanied by her granddaughter on percussion. Violeta accompanied her children in the LP "Los Parra de Chillán" for the Barclay label. She began playing the cuatro, an instrument of Venezuelan origin, and the charango, an instrument of the high plateaus.

In April 1964 she did an exhibition of her arpilleras, oil paintings and wire sculptures in the Museum of Decorative Arts of the Louvre - the first solo exhibition of a Latin American artist at the museum. In 1965, the publisher François Maspero, Paris, published her book "Poésie Populaire des Andes". In Geneva, Swiss television made a documentary about the artist and her work, "Violeta Parra, Chilean Embroiderer".

Favre and Parra returned to South America, in June 1965. Violeta recorded two 45s, one with her daughter Isabel and another to instrumental music for cuatro and quena with Gilbert Favre, whom she christened "El Tocador Afuerino" (The outsider musician). Her music now incorporated the Venezuelan cuatro and the charango from the plateaus of northern Chile. EMI Odeon circulated the LP "Remembering Chile (a Chilean in Paris)," whose cover was illustrated with her own arpilleras. Soon after, however, Favre and Parra broke up, provoked by his desire to live in Bolivia where he was part of a successful Bolivian music act, Los Jairas.

Parra’s energy was invested in reviving a unique version of the Peña (now known as La Peña de Los Parra), a community center for the arts and for political activism. Some have stated she established the first 'peña', but as said by the RAE, places such as these had been called that at least since 1936. Parra s Peña was a tent (somewhat similar looking to a circus tent) that she set up on a 30 x 30 meter piece of land in the Parque La Quintrala, at number 340 Carmen Street, in today’s La Reina municipality of Santiago, in the area once known as la Cañada. Her tent hosted musical spectacles where she often sang with her children, and she and her children also lived on the same land. In La Reina, at La Cañada 7200, she also established a cultural center called "La Carpa de la Reina" inaugurated on 17 December 1965. She also installed a folk peña in the International Fair of Santiago (FISA), where she was invited. On the same year, she participated in numerous national television programs and signed a contract with Radio Minería which would be the last radio station to be used as a platform for her work.

Under the EMi Odeón label, in 1966 was released the LP "La Carpa de La Reina" featuring three songs performed by Violeta Parra and nine by guest artists announced at the carpa by Violeta herself. She travelled to La Paz, Bolivia, to meet with Gilbert Favre, where she regularly appeared in the Peña. She came back to Chile with Altiplano groups, presenting them in her carpa, on television and in her children's Peña. She also performed in concert at the Chilean southern cities of Osorno and Punta Arenas, invited by René Largo Farias, under the "Chile Ríe y Canta" ("Chile Laughs and Sings") program. Accompanied by her children and Uruguayan Alberto Zapicán, she recorded for RCA Victor the LP "The Last Compositions of Violeta Parra". In that year, Favre returned briefly to Chile with his group, but declined to stay, because in the meantime he had married in Bolivia.

Her most renowned song, Gracias a la Vida ("Thanks to Life"), was popularized throughout Latin America by Mercedes Sosa, in Brazil by Elis Regina and later in the US by Joan Baez. It remains one of the most covered Latin American songs in history. Other notable covers of this tragic, but widely beloved, folk anthem include the Italian guitar-vocal solo of Adriana Mezzadri and La Oreja de Van Gogh at the 2005 Viña del Mar International Song Festival. It has been treated by classically trained musicians such as in the fully orchestrated rendition by conservatory-trained Alberto Cortez. The song has been re-recorded by several Latin artists and Canadian Michael Bublé to gather funds for the Chilean people affected by the earthquake in Chile, February 2010.

"Gracias a la vida" was written and recorded in 1964-65 following Parra's separation with her long-time partner. It was released in Las Últimas Composiciones (1966), the last album Parra published before taking her life in 1967. Parra's lyrics are ambiguous at first: the song may be read as a romantic celebration of life and individual experience,however the circumstances surrounding the song suggest that Parra also intended the song as a sort of suicide note, thanking life for all it has given her. It may even be read as ironic, pointing out that a life full of good health, opportunity and worldly experience may not offer any consolation to grief and the contradictory nature of the human condition.

    Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto
    Me dio dos luceros que cuando los abro
    Perfecto distingo lo negro del blanco
    Y en el alto cielo su fondo estrellado
    Y en las multitudes el hombre que yo amo

Translated into English:

    Thanks to life, which has given me so much
    It gave me two bright stars that when I open them,
    I perfectly distinguish the black from white
    And in the sky above, her starry backdrop
    And within the multitudes the man I love

"Volver a los Diecisiete"

Another highly regarded song - the last she wrote - is "Volver a los Diecisiete" ("Being Seventeen Again"). It celebrates the themes of youthful life, in tragic contrast to her biography.Unlike much popular music, it moves through minor key progression creating an introspective if not melancholy mood and thus has lent itself to classical treatment as well as popular music. Despite its originality, Parra's music was deeply rooted in folk song traditions, as is the case with Nueva Canción in general.


Parra died by suicide in 1967 by a gunshot to the head. Several memorials were held after her death, both in Chile and abroad. She was an inspiration for several Latin-American artists, such as Victor Jara and the musical movement of the "Nueva Cancion Chilena", which renewed interest in Chilean folklore.

In 1992, the Violeta Parra Foundation was founded at the initiative of her children, with the aim to group, organize and disseminate her still-unpublished work.In 1997, with the participation of Violeta Parra Foundation and the Department of Cultural Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile, her visual work was exhibited in the Museum of Decorative Arts of the Louvre Museum, Paris. In 2007, the 90th anniversary of her birth was commemorated with an exhibition of her visual work at the Centro Cultural Palacio La Moneda and the release of a collection of her art work titled, "Visual Work of Violeta Parra".

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Violeta Went to Heaven (Spanish: Violeta se fue a los cielos) is a 2011 Chilean biopic about singer and folklorist Violeta Parra, directed by Andrés Wood. The film is based on an eponymous book, a biography, written by Ángel Parra, Violeta's son with Luis Cereceda Arenas. Parra collaborated on the film, The film was selected as the Chilean entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 84th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist. The film won Sundance’s 2012 World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize.





 Violeta se fue a los cielos (Violeta Went to Heaven‬  (avi   1520mb)

 included are English, Spanish and Italian subtitles 1 hour 44min


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Cantos Chilenos is a compact disc with works by Violeta Parra, published in Chile in October 2010 under the auspices of the Violeta Parra Foundation and the Oveja Negra label. According to the researcher Hannes Salo, it is a compilation album, which includes remastered versions of his first recordings. Among these are the records that appeared on two of the stone discs (78 rpm) that Violeta recorded with her sister Hilda Parra for the RCA label (RCA Victor 90-1219 and RCA Victor 90-1351); a theme (La jardinera) from the stone album he recorded for Odeón with his daughter Isabel (Odeón 89-952); and the songs that appeared in the first LP recorded by Violeta for Odeón: "El Folklore de Chile" (1957).

As an "extra" the CD includes on Track 8 an unpublished record of a Radio Chile program, from 1958, in which Violeta, in addition to interpreting some fragments of songs, and a live version of "What a shame the soul feels" , interview with his collaborator Florencia Durán, maternal grandmother of Luis Arce, husband of Violeta. Likewise, on track 22, an instrumental version of "Casamiento de negros" (Melody madness) performed by Les Baxter and his orchestra (United States), which was taken from the single Capitol CL 14603 (1956), is included.

The voice of Violeta Parra is a universal sound. That is why it is greater the privilege to know their earliest and strangest recordings. Because it is going to meet that same voice in its beginnings, before its multiple flights. Here you hear that timbre, young and real in a recording studio in Santiago sometime between 1949 and 1952, in the animation of a cueca. One listens to Violeta Parra and a child talking to her and he listens to the Chileans from half a century ago, imagines what has been lost and what remains in that speech, and connects him with the speech of any day today. the metro or in a micro. It is a voice that speaks of us.

They are records of the era of the acetate disk. Here is the prehistory of the folklorist, along with her sister Hilda in the duo Las Hermanas Parra. The same thing happens with music. It is to discover the place that Cueca had in the 40s and 50s in Chile, before any classification. The arrangements are with guitar and piano, animation and tambourine, with the famous session guitarists of that time as Humberto Campos. "The mass of the rooster" and "What rich dinner" are the first, in greater tone and with nice melody, so that later the accordion introduces a beautiful waltz "Judas", with guitar accompaniment in strumming and plucking. Then comes the privilege of attending a folio change, when Violeta Parra this time sings a duet with her daughter Isabel Parra in a tune with guitar and harp.

Another finding is the recording of the folklorist and not only singer, but researcher, with her voice on the radio in 1959. She takes an almost didactic tour of the popular music of the time that is priceless, as a teacher would. Violeta Parra describes the empire of the tunes in the mid-century Chilean popular taste and she herself sings the successes of Ester Soré, Los Cuatro Huasos or Chito Faró to exemplify it, and it is possible to clearly understand how different that music is to the tunes and authentic folklore songs that she is discovering in her compilations in the fields. "Giants of modern music", she calls them, versus what she herself calls "this battle for the defense of our authentic song". And then he opens the definitive door to history when he interviews the singer Flora Leyton, from the town of Alto Jahuel, south of the metropolitan region, a woman born in 1869 or 1868, who is then ninety years old and of whom the folklorist has learned the waltz "What a pity the soul feels". Here Violeta Parra is no longer the teacher, she is the apprentice.

"Mrs. Flora is here with me on the station (...) Here she is with her white head, with her back tilted by the weight of her ninety years," he says, and then they talk about the legendary popular poet Bernardino Guajardo, who sold popular liras, or make memories of the War of the Pacific, "the war of the cholos" as they both call it. And when Violeta Parra plays one of her anticuecas, it is not a mirage to guess there a seed for the most introspective guitar of the future Víctor Jara. Just then we are at the height of his first LP published in Chile, Violeta Parra, singing and guitar (1956), fully in the compilation that from then on she will press on her albums. There parade the refueling "The inhuman", the corner "Is here or is not here", the waltz "Are your eyes", the famous "Parabienes backwards", the song to the poet of "Verse by greeting", "Verses for the sacred script "and" Verses for farewell ", the habanera" Ausencia ", the tunes" Las oranges "and" Not having as la maire ", the polka" El sacristán ", the instrumental" Tres polcas antiguos "and the mazurca "The ungrateful pigeon". At closing, an amazing version of "Casamie.

Violeta Parra - Cantos Chilenos     (flac 252mb)

01. La misa del gallo (2:17)
02. Que rica cena (1:16)
03. Judas (3:14)
04. Ya se fue el año viejo  (1:38)
05. En el norte  (1:41)
06. Ven [Popular chilena] (2:56)
07. La jardinera  (3:08)
08. Violeta entrevista a Doña Flor. Anticuecas / Tres cuecas punteadas / Que pena siente el alma / Anticueca Nº 1  (16:21)
09. La inhumana [Popular chilena] (3:11)
10. Es aquí o no es aquí [Popular chilena] (3:14)
11. Son tus ojos [Popular chilena] (1:51)
12. Parabienes al revés  (2:04)
13. Verso por saludo [Popular chilena] (3:07)
14. Ausencia  (3:20)
15. Las naranjas [Popular chilena] (3:35)
16. El sacristán [Popular chilena] (2:38)
17. Versos por la sagrada escritura [Popular chilena] (5:16)
18. Tres polkas antiguas [Popular chilena] (2:15)
19. Verso por despedida a Gabriela Mistral  (3:47)
20. No habiendo como la maire [Popular chilena] (4:34)
21. La paloma ingrata [Popular chilena] (2:19)
22. Melodia loca (Casamiento de negros) (2:04)

Violeta Parra - Cantos Chilenos     (ogg  122mb)

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Canciones reencontradas en París is a posthumous compilation album by Violeta Parra originally released in France in 1971 under the Chilean label Peña de los Parra, and distributed by the DICAP label, consisting of unpublished songs recorded by the singer-songwriter between 1961 and 1963. It has several re-editions, some of which, in addition to making changes to the song list, also change the title of the album by A River of Blood or Man with his reason. The duo Isabel and Ángel Parra, formed by the children of Violeta, Ángel and Isabel, collaborates on the album.

The last compositions was the last album edited in life of the folklorist; nevertheless, a great amount of his songs had been unpublished, waiting for final recordings or simply forgotten in foreign recording studios. The edition of Songs Reencountered in Paris comes to pick up some of the most important themes that Violeta Parra had not released in her own albums, including some classic compositions of great social content, such as "Arauco tiene un Pena" and "According to the Favor of the Wind "; political commitment ("La Carta", where he proclaims that his nine brothers are "communists, with the favor of my God", "Santiago Penando Estás") and even a song ("Rodríguez y Recabarren") that was censored in some countries because to the explicit condemnation of certain political regimes that repressed fighters and artists throughout the world (he mentions Manuel Rodríguez, Luis Emilio Recabarren, Ángel Vicente Peñaloza, Federico García Lorca, Emiliano Zapata and Patrice Lumumba, among those caudillos shot down by certain systems politicians).

The album is recorded by Violeta Parra with the (almost) only accompaniment of her acoustic guitar in almost all the songs. Several of the songs of this album, including some of those that appeared in later reissues, are also included in the 1991 album Chants et rythmes du Chili, along with Los Calchakis, Isabel and Ángel Parra, authors of the album Au Chili avec los Parra de Chillán from which some themes are also extracted. In April 2008, the Chilean edition of Rolling Stone magazine ranked this album as the 19th best Chilean record of all time.

Violeta Parra - Canciones Reencontradas en París       (flac   181mb)


‭01 Según El Favor Del Viento 2:28
‭02 Arauco Tiene Una Pena 2:59
‭03 Hasta Cuando Está 1:11
‭04 Santiago Penando Estás 3:37
‭05 La Carta 2:57
‭06 Qué Vamos A Hacer 3:34
‭07 En Una Barca De Amores 3:46
‭08 Rodríguez Y Recabarren 4:20
‭09 Paseaba El Pueblo Sus Banderas Rojas 3:00
‭10 Miren Como Sonríen 2:22
‭11 Arriba Quemando El Sol 2:41
‭12 Qué Dirá El Santo Padre 2:52
‭13 Voz Relato De Víctor Jara 1:50

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Composiciones para Guitarra is the name of an album by Chilean folklorist and musician Violeta Parra. This is his most experimental album, in which there are no songs in the conventional format, but composed songs for solo guitar, or voice and guitar, in which Violeta escapes the traditional forms of traditional music and, literally, invents new forms of musicalization, with a distant base in Chilean folklore. Part of these compositions belong to the group of songs written shortly before 1957, some of which were published in the EP Compositions for Guitar by EMI Odeón. Among them are "El Joven Sergio" (inspired by his sympathy for the photographer Sergio Larraín, who portrayed it), "Aires del Canto a Divino", "Anticueca # 1", "Anticueca # 2" and "Travesuras", which appear on this album, and "Tres Palabras", "Los Manteles de Nemesio" (in honor of Nemesio Antúnez, Chilean painter), "Fray Gastón Baila Cueca con el Diablo", among others that remain unpublished or hidden in Violeta's discography .

Other songs have a later origin, such as the "Anticuecas", recorded at the behest of the Chilean composer Miguel Letelier around 1960. "El Gavilán, Gavilán" was originally thought of as a ballet, according to Violeta in an interview with Radio Universidad de Concepción in 1960, where he interprets a fragment of the extensive song, which was not recorded professionally until 1964. The subject has been analyzed and studied deeply in the academic environment due to its extreme musical complexity and the original way in which the artist sings ( or shouts) the verses in which he alludes to a love "liar" and "liar".

After the death of the folklorist, the works remained in the hands of the Letelier family for more than fifteen years. In 1995, the researcher Olivia Concha did an exhaustive work on these, which was published by the Chilean Musical Magazine. Composiciones para Guitarra was released thirty-two years after the death of Violeta Parra, in 1999.

‬Violeta Parra‭ ‬-‭ ‬Obras para Guitarra‭      (flac   141mb)


01 El Gavilán, Gavilán 12:18
02 Travesuras 0:53
03 Anticueca 5 4:02
04 Anticueca 1 21:9
05 Anticueca 2 4:07
06 Anticueca 3 2:46
07 Anticueca 4 2:54
08 Tema Libre 1 2:29
09 Tema Libre 2 2:48
10 El Pingüino 3:18
11 El Joven Sergio 1:37
12 La Víspera De San Juan 1:55
13 Cueca Larga 5:52
14 El Gavilán, Gavilán (París) 9:35
15 Qué Dirá El Santo Padre 1:34
16 Canto A Lo Divino 1:39



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‭En Vivo En Ginebra‬ is a unique record, recorded from a live concert that Violeta gave in 1965 in the Swiss city of Geneva, accompanied by Gilbert Favre in quenas and percussion. It was recorded in a private house of, in tape of 1/4 of an inch, and conceived as a walk through the folkloric music of Chile, starting with the different stages of the "velorio del angelito" (rural ceremonial used to accompany the vigils of the deceased infants) performed in a divine singing format, and following with a selection of cuecas, tonadas and other rhythms typical of Chile.

The album was released as a double CD, despite having a duration of about sixty-six minutes. A selection of themes was also released for a single album, which omits some of the themes.

Violeta Parra - En Vivo En Ginebra   (flac   253mb)

‭01 Entrevista En Francés A Violeta Parra 27:59
‭02 Concierto Sirilla Me Pides 2:01
‭03 Ven Acá Regalo Mío 1:49
‭04 Qué He Sacado Con Quererte 3:26
‭05 Del Norte Vengo Maruca 2:47
‭06 Danza: Danzarina 1:57
‭07 Camanchaca 1:45
‭08 16 De Julio 4:26
‭09 En El Cuarto De La Carmela 5:48
‭10 Ojos Azules 4:12
‭11 Ven Acá Regalo Mío (Violeta Baila Cueca) 3:07
‭12 Cueca Para Flauta Y Tambor 1:53
‭13 Galambo (Danse Du Nord Du Chili) 3:08
‭14 Casamiento De Negros 3:41
‭15 El Sacristán 3:02
‭16 Arráncame El Corazón 2:45

Violeta Parra - En Vivo En Ginebra      (flac   123mb)

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Published in Chile by the Odeón label in September 1959, as Vol. IV of the series El folklore de Chile (LDC-36054). It gathers 15 tonadas collected by Violeta between Santiago and Lautaro in 1959. The cover of the album was made by the painter Nemesio Antúnez. The first edition of the LP included a booklet of 6 pages where the album is presented. The author of the text is not indicated, but Hannes Salo, in cancioneros.com, indicates that it probably belongs to Gastón Soublette, who commented several of the records published by Violeta at that time. Next, I transcribe the text of this booklet:
Booklet text

Until the nineteenth century, in most countries, and certainly in ours, folklore was still in its pure state. It was possible to capture it in all its integrity, since still the phonographic reproduction, the cinema, the communications by land, sea and air, did not lavish themselves like today, or did not exist. Progress brought mass reproduction, imposed the need for the popular. The repetition in series of the popular, especially in music, devastated folklore. Only countries that have seriously taken care of the conservation of this collection have allowed the survival of traditional airs. Chile is, in Latin America, the least conservative people of traditions. The State, only by exception, has dealt with such important things as the preservation and encouragement of what constitutes, in a non-negligible measure, a good part of the national character.

This is why the selfless and intelligent work of a woman in love with the musical tradition of the people, such as Violeta Parra, deserves the honors of an unprecedented national recognition. She has been traveling through Chile for years, from north to south, from east to west, armed with a guitar and a tape recorder. He goes and discovers behind the mountains, where the people still do not know the railroad, to some old peasant ladies who sing a hundred years or more ago as their ancestors did, record tonadas and cuecas, sit on the threshold of a ranch and the traditional forms, the tempo and the rhythm of the ancient airs of the earth are taught by the old ladies. A regiment of specialized folklorists would have never done it better.

Now we know for her something more of the character of the peasant ancestors, who were the founders of the Chilean economy. From the sad mood of the songs to the divine; of the naive fatalism of the tonadas that are said by the disgusted lovers; of the crackling grace of a threshing cueca. In quatrains and tenths that flowed spontaneously from the ears of the simple mountain poets inside, the language appears to us now rich as it was never after. In many cases they should have been, however, stanzas of illiterate poets, or happy improvisations of singers who invented the heat of peasant or village parties. It is a language that must be described as functional, because it is almost always the distortion introduced to the castizo, and usually consists of adding or deleting consonants to a word, at will, according to the formal conveniences required by music, the meter and even the rhythm. In the countries of secular tradition, like the Europeans, in similar form the dialects arose.

Violeta Parra delivers on this album fifteen new tunes, collected in 1959 between Lautaro and Santiago. How much mountain, how many rivers and forests, how much coast of Chile between these two points! And between mountain range and sea, remote rural populations, until where it does not arrive but the wagon; lands lost at the bottom of forested chains; villages of difficult access. From there it is the people who sing and play with Violeta.

It has been said that the folkloric arsenal collected by our maxim divulgadora accuses the monotony of traditional and folk airs of Chile. It is a superficial appreciation. In the melodic and rhythmic sense we believe that it is as rich as any other of the vast Andean zone, at least. But as well as the public accustomed to the cultured music of the West it is monotonous and difficult to differentiate a composition of the musical goldsmithing of India, for example, the formal analysis of a tune in parallel with another of diverse region seems impossible to him; they are more or less the same thing, they say. Listened with greater attention, it will be seen instead that there is, between one and another, diversity of times, of rhythm, of harmonic color. In many of them, autochthonous elements and colonial reminiscences are interspersed with regional characteristics according to the zonal anthropological constitution. The greater geographical distance separates one region from the other - and Chile stretches between parallels 17 and 56 - the more this folk diversity is accentuated, even in the instruments used to accompany the song or dance.diversity of times, of rhythm, of harmonic color. In many of them, autochthonous elements and colonial reminiscences are interspersed with regional characteristics according to the zonal anthropological constitution. The greater geographical distance separates one region from the other - and Chile stretches between parallels 17 and 56 - the more this folk diversity is accentuated, even in the instruments used to accompany the song or dance.

Violeta Parra - La Tonada   (flac   135mb)


‭01 A Dónde Vas Jilguerillo 3:55
‭02 Atención Mozos Solteros 3:00
‭03 Cuando Salí De Mi Casa 5:24
‭04 Si Lo Que Amo Tiene Dueño 3:38
‭05 ¿Cuándo Habrá Como Casarse? 2:36
‭06 Un Reo Siendo Variable 3:23
‭07 Si Te Hallas Arrepentido 2:16
‭08 Las Tres Pollas Negras 3:49
‭09 Una Naranja Me Dieron 2:46
‭10 Huyendo Voy De Tus Rabias 3:50
‭11 El Joven Para Casarse 2:05
‭12 Tan Demudado Te He Visto 3:51
‭13 Yo Tenía En Mi Jardín 2:25
‭14 Imposible Que La Luna 3:42
‭15 Blanca Flor Y Filumena 4:02

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