Las Últimas Composiciones de Violeta Parra

There’s a moment on this album, during the song ‘Cantores que Reflexionan’ (Singers Who Reflect), where the listener is held suspended in a delicate, shimmering web of mountain-stream clear vocals and melodious finger-picked strings – a sonic world which feels at once as comforting and dangerous as childhood innocence and wonder. It’s a spirit which haunts every track of this extraordinary reissue of songs recorded in 1966 by famed Chilean multi-disciplinary artist, musician, social activist and ethnomusicologist Violeta Parra. This was her final album, and one which would come to define her life.

Born in 1917, one of nine children in a poor, musical family, Parra grew up steeped in traditional folk songs. Following her father’s death in 1929, out of necessity four of the oldest siblings (including Violeta) began performing in nightclubs around the southern city of Chillán. From the late 1930s, Violeta began a successful solo singing career while collecting and compiling more than 3,000 songs, folk tales and proverbs from all over the country, eventually hosting popular radio shows dedicated to the subject.

Violeta was enraged by the conditions she found among the poorest communities and began composing original music based on traditional forms, pioneering what would come to be known as nueva canción chilena (Chilean new song), critiquing the elite of Chilean society and championing the disenfranchised. It’s this music that you will hear on this record, which opens with the deeply affecting ‘Gracias a la Vida’ (Thanks to Life). Accompanying herself on the charango, Violeta’s pure, lilting voice conjures a world of longing and pain. Her sound is at once fragile, clear and deeply rooted in the human experience. Small wonder that the song has become a Latin American anthem, covered by Mercedes Sosa, Elis Regina and others. ‘Maldigo del alto Cielo’ (I Curse from High Heaven), on which Parra duets with Uruguayan percussionist and singer Alberto Giménez Zapicán over rhythmic strumming and drummed guitar, bursts with imagination and spirit. ‘El Gillatun’ sparkles like a Spring sunset, Violeta’s voice skipping with charismatic passion. ‘Volver a los 17’ (Return to 17) is as wistful and romantic as you might imagine – a wonderful, swirling melody fringed with trembling yearning and acceptance. This is music sprung from a deep well.

Throughout the 1960s, Violeta’s work grew ever more political, denouncing governmental hypocrisy and violence. She strove to establish a University of Folklore – a space where anyone could learn to play, sing and dance to traditional music, but the strain of her long struggles, alongside a bitter breakup with Swiss musician Gilbert Favre, proved too much. Violeta took her own life in 1967, not long after the release of this remarkable record.