Mapping Violeta Parra’s Cultural Landscapes explores the legacy and artistic corpus of Violeta Parra. Contributors have approached her work from interdisciplinary angles that include history, music, film studies, literary studies, and visual arts. They have mapped out the richness of the Chilean artist’s cultural production, approaching her work with a view to casting an innovative light on her multifaceted career. The benefit to our understanding of Violeta from the perspective of a twenty-first-century audience is tremendous. In her Décimas , she disclosed a deep attachment to her craft, viewing her guitar, for instance, as an agent of work, something that would sustain her during difficult times, as it did after the breakup of her first marriage:
volví a tomar la guitarra; / con fuerza Violeta Parra (1976, 172)1
During her career in Chile, the artist experienced success among eclectic groups, such as the cultural elite and the low-income, marginalized sectors. Her relationship to these specific groups was colored in varying hues; individuals such as Gastón Soublette , Sergio (Queco) Larraín , and so on were considered pitucos [well-to-do] by the artist, potentially problematizing any chance that their artistic association would develop into a friendship (Sáez 1999, 93–4). On the other hand, she felt at ease in the company of the humble, especially those who lived in the peripheral areas of Santiago, such as doña Rosa Lorca , from Barrancas, a former community composed mostly of migrant farmers. Violeta understood that a critical aspect of artistic collaboration, such as the transcription or recording of a musical repertoire, required earning people’s trust and respecting their craft. For the artist, doña Rosa possessed a trove of folkloric knowledge; she was an expert in homemade remedies and knew how to arrange angelitos [dead babies] in an original and creative manner (Manns 1984, 55–6). In the words of her son, the late Ángel Parra , finding Chile’s hidden folklore in the repertoires of the humble signified finding herself, the real Violeta del Carmen Parra Sandoval (2006, 2; section 3).[I took up the guitar again. Let’s go, Violeta Parra.]
The Viola Chilensis, as she was baptized by her brother Nicanor Parra , is a subject of keen interest in Ethnic Studies, ethno-musical studies, and Latin American Studies in general. She was born on October 4, 1917, in San Carlos, near Chillán. She shares a geographical area of origin with Víctor Jara and Claudio Arrau . Her father had great musical and poetic skills but did not live up to his potential, working at one point as an elementary school teacher, but mostly drowning his artistic frustrations with heavy drinking and carousing. Certainly, Violeta and her siblings endured a childhood that was challenging but also artistically infused. In spite of the measures taken by her mother, who believed that her husband’s love for the guitar had wrecked his life, Violeta stubbornly learned how to play the instrument first for pleasure but later to earn a living (Herrero 2017, 54–55). She continued that practice in Santiago, in humble musical venues, interpreting songs of a rather commercial nature, enduring barroom brawls and managing to poeticize about it. These incursions would sustain her while she searched for her true artistic expression. In a definitive way, her research and subsequent musical compositions reflected how artificial Chile’s official rendition of folklore had become. Violeta found that people were enamored of imported popular culture and disdainful of her voice and campesina [peasant-style] musical renditions. They struck many as “cantos cómicos” [comical songs] (Parra 2006, 3; section 1). Combatively, she opened new paths and bequeathed to the nation a repertoire of music that had been neglected by a Chile that had become infatuated with Euro-Northern musical markets. Followers of Violeta are now familiar with her avant-garde compositions, such as “El gavilán” [The hawk] and “Mazúrquica Modérnica”, and her playing the cuatro [Venezuelan lute], the guitarrón, and the charango. During her time, however, Violeta’s originality and mastery of those instruments made an impression on other artists (NHRSC 2013, 18:31–18:48).
During her meandering life, the artist compiled and pursued a multidimensional craft. She was a singer-songwriter, visual artist, poet, political activist and more. Although there were other well-known compilers, she broke new ground. She expressed the trends of the rural in the urban and vice versa and returned to the countryside melodies that, as her career evolved, she imbued with socio-political awareness. Consider, for instance, the artist’s folkloric-political defiance in the song “Al centro de la injusticia” [At the Center of Injustice]. She tapped the resources that were available to her—or that she made available through sheer force—to re-conceptualize, invigorate, and politicize Chile’s cultural production. Demanding respect for her craft, she reached international status; in fact, in the 1950s, one of her compositions captivated musician and composer Les Baxter, who incorporated it into his orchestral arrangements of world music. Two decades later, an enduring connection between Violeta and the international community was established through folk singer Joan Baez, who included her own rendition of Parra’s “Gracias a la Vida” [Thanks to Life] on the former’s eponymous 1974 album. Also including a song composed by Víctor Jara , Baez dedicated the album to Chileans under the Pinochet dictatorship. This decision united the artistic legacies of the two Chilean singer-songwriters, mother and offspring of the Nueva Canción [New Song] movement in Chile. With “Gracias a la Vida”, Baez put the spotlight on what is arguably Parra’s most enduring composition, one whose melody was like a balm to soothe the despair and divisiveness of the Chilean nation .
Violeta engaged in a type of visual art and creative writing that could be said to be its own kind of socio-political discourse. She wove her own career and struggles into it and projected all of that onto the vicissitudes of her nation and Latin America. She was determined to pursue high levels of recognition and accolades. She had been honored in Santiago with the Caupolicán Prize given by variety show journalists; doubting she would win the award, she was surprised and brought to tears by it (Sáez 1999, 77). Following the fate of other Chilean talent, however, Violeta would have to go abroad before she would be accepted by mainstream Chile. In Paris, strolling in the vicinity of the Louvre, she asserted in earnest: “ahí estarán mis trabajos en algunos años más” [My work will be exhibited here in a few years] (A. Parra 2006, 12; section 1). Her determination paid off and her work received international recognition in Paris, where she displayed her arpilleras [embroideries] at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre in 1964. Ángel Parra vividly remembered how his mother made her way into the museum:
cuando ella hizo la exposición en el Louvre, recuerdo haber ido con ella con las cosas debajo de los brazos, las telas y las tapicerías … y pusimos todo, tirado, delante del escritorio del director del Museo de Artes Decorativas , y el tipo quedó convencido inmediatamente, cuando vio todas esas obras por el suelo. El tipo estaba entre fascinado, aterrado y yo creo que es un caso único en la historia, en la historia del museo y en la historia de mi mamá, también, eso de haber obtenido en el plazo de cuatro meses todo el segundo piso para ella del Museo de Artes Decorativas , y eso era por la fuerza que trasmitía (2003, 47:56–48:48).
After that accomplishment, the Chilean establishment was obliged to come to terms with Violeta’s creative genius, just as it had been forced to do so with Nobel Laureate Gabriela Mistral in 1945. In the words of Gonzalo Rojas , both women became united in the Chilean consciousness as a permanent yet cataclysmic national pulse (Parra 2015, 85). Building an enduring link, Violeta honored Mistral at the time of the poet’s death (in 1957):[when she exhibited at the Louvre, I remember going along with her with things under my arms, cloths and tapestries … and we laid everything out, spread it on the floor, in front of the desk of the director of the Museum of Decorative Arts; when he saw all these works on the floor the man was immediately impressed. He was fascinated and at the same time terrified. I think it is a unique case in history, in the history of the museum and in the history of my mother, too, obtaining in the course of four months the whole of the second floor for her exhibit at the Museum of Decorative Arts. And, that was possible because of the strength that she emitted.]
Jamás de nuestra memoria / has de borrarte, Gabriela… /La Providencia Divina / se llevó la flor más bella (Parra 1976, 242).
Violeta ended her life with a self-inflicted gunshot at her Carpa [Tent], her last home, which was also her final artistic venue. Located in La Reina, an upper middle–class municipality in Santiago, the circus-like structure symbolized Violeta’s journey back to her roots. Having enjoyed success touring Europe, she had returned to Chile and had accepted a generous offer by the mayor to install herself in La Reina. She laid out an ambitious project, the creation of the University of Folklore, which she believed could be accomplished in the sui generis life structure she had created for herself. Unfortunately, her international success was not matched nationally and she remained rather marginalized in her Carpa de La Reina without access to a wide audience. Many accounts relate how the artist would prepare a first-class musical repertoire and then no audience would come. She was reborn on the day of her death for the majority of Chileans, becoming a legend in the style of Kurt Cobain and Alexander McQueen; photos in the popular press showed the artist’s coffin at the Carpa de La Reina, surrounded by flowers and a long line of mourners. For her wake, Chile rose to its feet to recognize the artist’s contribution to her nation. She was commemorated by all, from the humblest to the Chair of the Senate (Salvador Allende ) and the President of the Republic (Eduardo Frei ) (Sáez 1999, 13).[You will never be erased from our memories, Gabriela. Divine Providence took the prettiest flower.]
Overview of Contributors and Contents
Part 1 of this volume, “Viola admirable: Compilation, Creation, and the Chilean Nation”, discusses and reflects upon Violeta’s cultural production in Chile. It considers the intersections of what she compiled with what she produced as a singer-songwriter, visual artist, and poet. Nicanor Parra called her “Viola admirable”, a woman who created a wealth of cultural expression that was essentially revolutionary. Additionally, Pablo Neruda exclaimed: “¡Ay, qué manera de caer hacia arriba… esta mujer!” [What a way to fall upwards… this woman!]. In the introduction to one of the first anthologies of Violeta’s poetry, Juan Andrés Piña underscored the difficulty of fully analyzing the artist’s accomplishments since she expressed herself in so many different forms. Produced during the Pinochet dictatorship, the anthology had to pass under the censor’s accusing eye. Nonetheless, Piña managed to portray the allure that Violeta, the performer and the private person, has held for generations:
investigadora de todas las manifestaciones del saber popular, también es mito, mitología y animita. Su vida llena de dificultades, sus desventurados amores, su carácter fuerte, irascible y tierno a la vez, su empeño por llevar adelante su trabajo, su suicidio, han hecho de ella un personaje nacional (1976, 14).
[researcher of all forms of popular knowledge; she is also myth, mythology, and object of a shrine. Her life full of difficulties; her tragic lo...