Ericka Kim Verba’s vivid and intense biography of Violeta Parra takes its title from Parra’s internationally acclaimed song, “Thanks to Life” (Gracias a la Vida). The book title acknowledges a universally recognized song and is a tribute to Parra’s life, which left its legacy both at home and abroad, especially in Europe. The book acknowledges Parra as the first Latin American woman to have had a solo show at the Museum of Decorative Arts in the Louvre, Paris, in 1964. Despite such recognition, it was only after her death that the true value of her work was acknowledged. Verba’s research shows Parra constantly battled a lack of recognition and being deemed inconsequential throughout her life; the latter mostly in Chile.
Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra is an in-depth, detailed involvement that highlights not only Parra’s life, but also the biographer’s tenacity to acquaint the reader with the humanity behind the legendary name. In the introduction to the book, Verba notes that her fascination with Parra started in her teens due to her connections with a Chilean musician family. “The family taught me my first Violeta Parra songs and guided my political awakening to the brutality of the Pinochet dictatorship and the role of the US government in installing and supporting it,” Verba writes. Since then, Parra became an ever-present persona in Verba’s life—in research, performance, and academia.
The book’s chapters are organized in a way that makes it easy for the reader to discern the recurring themes and piece together an understanding of Parra’s personal and public life. Parra grew up in Chile’s south, with the family making several moves before she settled in Santiago at the age of 15 upon an invitation from her brother Nicanor. Parra’s later reflections on her two decades in Santiago before returning to the countryside and becoming a folklorista are based upon her judgment of what constitutes authenticity.
Authenticity is a recurring theme throughout the book, with the author noting Parra’s constant striving to bring Chile’s cultural heritage to attention. At the same time, Parra needed to earn a living, and her performances in Santiago, which she distinguishes from her later career, were a necessity for her survival. Survival was a recurring concern for Parra throughout her life. Despite her prolific work, the economic compensation never matched her efforts.
Parra’s personal life is also brought sharply into focus. The book discusses her two marriages, her relationships with partners and the turbulence that accompanied them, as well as Parra’s own family and her unconventional style of parenting, which veered from long absences to including her children in performances. Her children, Isabel and Angel Parra, would later become pioneers of the Chilean New Song Movement when they founded the folk music club Peña de los Parra in 1965. The absences from her family were decidedly marked by Parra’s own travels, mostly to Europe. While abroad, she connected with her identity, even though she was absent from her country. Traveling at a time when the Soviet Union was seeking to expand socialism as part of its foreign policy, Parra’s performances, like those of other Latin American folk musicians, drew audiences that were sympathetic to communist viewpoints. However, even here, her tenacity towards authenticity was not as well received among some audiences whose priorities were festive in nature and not centered on national culture.
Parra’s Quest for Authenticity
For Parra, however, Chilean identity remained of paramount importance. Verba includes song lyrics throughout the book, and of particular note is the song “Violeta Ausente” (Absent Violeta), written when Parra was on her first European tour, and in which she reflects on her Chilean identity while outside the country. Verba describes her biography of the Chilean folklorista as “a study of how Parra came to embody authenticity in the eyes of her public and in her own sense of self.” Both authenticity and Indigeneity played a significant role in Parra’s life and work. Verba notes that Parra likely was of both European and Indigenous ancestry. However, she only claimed Indigenous identity in the early 1960s, and only when traveling outside of Chile.
Parra’s quest for authenticity automatically excluded her early years as a singer as inauthentic in her viewpoint. Performing with her sister Hilda as the duo Las Hermanas Parra in the late 1940s and early 1950s lent Violeta recognition. However, Parra made a distinction between her early career, which contributed toward her livelihood, and her later focus on Chilean folklore, which she idealized according to a set of criteria that constituted traditional and Chilean themes, as opposed to foreign influence and commercial appeal.
Verba discusses the contradictions that Parra embodied and disseminated throughout her lifetime. Verba notes that Parra rejected much of Pan-Latin American music on the grounds of being a threat to Chilean oral traditions, despite at first performing it to make a living. Parra’s network of intellectuals and artists expanded as a result of her brother Nicanor’s connections and his invitations for Violeta to join his circle. Parra’s first recital was at Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s home, at the request of her brother Nicanor. Yet, she also lived on the fringes, marginalized, her talents largely unrecognized until after her death. Despite her artistic expansion, including her own songwriting in addition to visual arts ranging from paintings to ceramics and tapestries, Parra navigated a vacuum where class and social status impeded a forward momentum.
The Legacy of the Folklorista
Parra’s authority as a folklorista is undisputed. In 1957, Chilean writer Jorge Edwards described her as having “revealed our own folklore to ourselves.” According to Edwards, Parra’s career began with folklore. Between 1953 and 1957, Parra embarked on numerous projects and travels to Europe, where she prioritized folk music by giving it a singular platform. Parra wasn’t alone—Verba writes that she was part of an influential group of folkloristas who “contributed to the ideological struggle over chilenidad or what it meant to be Chilean in their era.” While Chile was home to the first folklore society in Latin America, demographic changes, particularly the movement of people from rural areas to Santiago, led to the loss of cultural practices. Performing folklore—collecting songs and singing them—was what separated the academic folklorists from the folkloristas who popularized Chile’s traditions.
Most folkloristas were left-wing adherents and supportive of the Chilean Communist Party. Despite the difference between the folklore movement and the Chilean New Song movement, Verba notes that the Communist Party still perceived the folkloristas as supporting their political agenda. The folklore revival in Chile happened at a time when the left wing was suppressed in Chile—both Parra and fellow Chilean folklorist Margaret Loyola were mentioned in a 1954 anti-communist manifesto. Folk revival differed from the later protest songs synonymous with the Chilean New Song. Folklore was associated with the “idealized pueblo” or the traditional concept, while the Chilean New Song was associated with the militant pueblo and class struggle.
On stage and in her personal life, Parra remained conscious of embodying authenticity in terms of dress, performance, and her way of life, thus identifying as a “mujer del pueblo.” The decision could have also contributed to her marginalization in society, as race and class were prominent markers in Chile. Verba notes that her emphasis on folklore might have overshadowed her other artistic pursuits. As the Chilean New Song Movement gained prominence, also due to its involvement with Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity Campaign, the media started differentiating between the old and new folklore, and Parra pertained to the former. Verba notes that even the Chilean New Song musicians, such as Jorge Coulon from Inti-Illimani and Eduardo Carrasco from Quilapayún, acknowledge that her contributions to the movement were underrecognized. Verba writes, “Parra’s contribution to the New Song would only be fully realized after her death.”
Parra’s life, terminated by suicide at the age of 49, sheds light on a life that was as much transnational as it was intimate. On one hand, Verba inscribes Parra’s life against a backdrop of the Cold War, cultural revival, socialist revolution, and rebellion against foreign intervention. On the other hand, the author also brings to light Parra’s own struggles, her psychological state, her depression, and her intense passion for anything related to life, be it delight or sadness. Swiss musician Gilbert Favre, with whom she had a turbulent relationship spanning both years and countries, described Violeta as “a very difficult and extremely sensitive person” and her death as “a problem of excessive loneliness.” Loneliness was reflected in both Parra’s personal and public life—for example, she was extremely disappointed that Chilean students did not share the same enthusiasm for folklore as she did, despite having written the song “Me Gustan Los Estudiantes” (I Like the Students).
Verba notes that Europe exoticized Parra, despite offering her opportunities that she did not find in Chile. Back home, the country’s elite institutions marginalized her. Verba closes her biographical account of Parra with lyrics from “Thanks to Life”: “Thanks to life for all it has given me/It has given me laughter, it has given me tears/ And so I distinguish joyfulness from sorrow.” However, her final words to her brother Nicanor, penned before her death, encapsulated the pain of not belonging: “I had nothing. I gave everything. I wanted to give and found no one to receive.” In all of Parra’s life, there was never a middle ground. While Verba’s research and attention to detail paint a picture of Parra’s accomplishments, the strength of this biography lies in laying bare the pain of Violeta Parra—an accomplished, talented woman for whom life and recognition played out on different planes.
Ramona Wadi is a freelance journalist and book reviewer. Her writing covers a range of themes in relation to Palestine and Latin America; the latter with a focus on Chile, Argentina and Cuba.