VIOLETA PARRA, THE NUEVA CANCIÓN CHILENA PIONEER

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Violeta Parra, the Chilean composer, singer-songwriter, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and visual artist, who was born on a day like today in 1917.

Violeta del Carmen Parra Sandoval (4 October 1917-5 February 1967) was a Chilean composer, singer-songwriter, folklorist, ethnomusicologist and visual artist. 

She pioneered the Nueva Canción Chilena, a renewal and a reinvention of Chilean folk music that would extend its sphere of influence outside Chile.

Her birthdate (4 October) was chosen Chilean Musicians' Day. In 2011, Andrés Wood directed a biopic about her, titled Violeta se fue a los cielos.

There is some uncertainty as to exactly where Violeta Parra was born. The stamp on her birth certificate says she was born in San Carlos, Ñuble Province, a small town in southern Chile on 4 October 1917, as Violeta del Carmen Parra Sandoval. However, both the Fundación Violeta Parra and the Museo Violeta Parra claim on their websites that she was born in San Fabián de Alico, near San Carlos.

She was one of nine children in the poor, but prolific Parra family. Her father, Nicanor Parra Alarcón, was a music teacher. Her mother, Clarisa Sandoval Navarrete had grown up in the countryside and was a seamstress. She sang and played the guitar, and taught Violeta and her siblings traditional folk songs. Among her brothers were the notable modern poet, better known as the anti-poet, Nicanor Parra (1914–2018), and fellow folklorist Roberto Parra (1921–1995). 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.

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.

More information: Salient Women

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 1948, Parra and her sister Hilda began singing together as The Parra Sisters, and they recorded some of their work on RCA VICTOR.

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 (aged 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.

Parra composed Gracias a la Vida in La Paz in 1966. In 1971 the song was popularized throughout Latin America by Mercedes Sosa, and later in Brazil by Elis Regina and in the US by Joan Baez.

In 1967, Parra died by suicide via gunshot. 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.

More information: Al Día News

 In the middle of the Alameda de la Delicias,
Chile borders the center with injustice.

Violeta Parra

MERCEDES SOSA: THE BLACK ONE,VOICE OF THE VOICELESS

Mercedes Sosa

The Grandma has continued reviewing some English grammar with two more Chapters, 8 and 9, of her new manual Intermediate Language Practice.

More information:  Future Tense

While The Grandma has been practising some grammar, she has listened to some beautiful songs of Mercedes Sosa, the Argentinian singer who was born in San Miguel de Tucumán on a day like today, eighty-three years ago.

Haydée Mercedes Sosa (9 July 1935-4 October 2009) sometimes known as La Negra, literally The Black One, was an Argentine singer who was popular throughout Latin America and many countries outside the region. With her roots in Argentine folk music, Sosa became one of the preeminent exponents of nueva canción. She gave voice to songs written by many Latin American songwriters. Her music made people hail her as the voice of the voiceless ones, and the voice of America.

Mercedes Sosa

Sosa performed in venues such as the Lincoln Center in New York City, the Théâtre Mogador in Paris and the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, as well as sell-out shows in New York's Carnegie Hall and the Roman Colosseum during her final decade of life. 

Her career spanned four decades and she was the recipient of several Grammy awards and nominations, including a posthumous Latin Grammy award for Best Folk Album. She served as an ambassador for UNICEF.

More information: Mercedes Sosa

Sosa was born on 9 July 1935, in San Miguel de Tucumán, in the northwestern Argentine province of Tucumán, of mestizo, Spanish, French, and Diaguita Amerindian ancestry. Her parents were Peronists, although they never registered in the party, and she started her career as a singer for the Peronist Party in Provincia Tucuman under the name Gladys Osorio. 

In 1950, at age fifteen, she won a singing competition organized by a local radio station and was given a contract to perform for two months. She recorded her first album, La Voz de la Zafra, in 1959. A performance at the 1965 Cosquín National Folklore Festival, where she was introduced and brought to the stage while sitting in the audience by fellow folk singer Jorge Cafrune, brought her to the attention of her native countrypeople.

Mercedes Sosa

Sosa and her first husband, Manuel Óscar Matus, with whom she had one son, were key players in the mid-60s nueva canción movement, which was called nuevo cancionero in Argentina.  Her second record was Canciones con Fundamento, a collection of Argentine folk songs.

In 1967, Sosa toured the United States and Europe with great success. In later years, she performed and recorded extensively, broadening her repertoire to include material from throughout Latin America. In the early 1970s, Sosa released two concept albums in collaboration with composer Ariel Ramírez and lyricist Félix Luna: Cantata Sudamericana and Mujeres Argentinas. 

She also recorded a tribute to Chilean musician Violeta Parra in 1971, including what was to become one of Sosa's signature songs, Gracias a la Vida. She also increased the popularity of songs written by Milton Nascimento of Brazil and Pablo Milanés and Silvio Rodríguez both from Cuba and Shakira from Colombia.

More information: The New York Times

After the military junta of Jorge Videla came to power in 1976, the atmosphere in Argentina grew increasingly oppressive. Sosa faced death threats against both her and her family, but refused for many years to leave the country. At a concert in La Plata in 1979, Sosa was searched and arrested on stage, along with all those attending the concert. Their release came about through international intervention. Banned in her own country, she moved to Paris and then to Madrid.

Mercedes Sosa

Sosa returned to Argentina from her exile in Europe in 1982, several months before the military regime collapsed as a result of the Falklands War, and gave a series of concerts at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, where she invited many of her younger colleagues to share the stage.

A double album of recordings from these performances became an instant best seller. In subsequent years, Sosa continued to tour both in Argentina and abroad, performing in such venues as the Lincoln Center in New York and the Théâtre Mogador in Paris. 

More information: Los Angeles Times

In a poor condition of health for much of the 1990s, she performed a comeback show in Argentina in 1998. In 1994, she played the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. In 2002, she sold out both Carnegie Hall in New York and the Colosseum in Rome in the same year.

A supporter of Perón, she favored leftist causes throughout her life. Sosa was a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Mercedes Sosa & Shakira

Suffering from recurrent endocrine and respiratory problems in later years, the 74-year-old Sosa was hospitalized in Buenos Aires on September 18, 2009. She died from multiple organ failure on October 4, 2009. 

She is survived by one son, Fabián Matus, born of her first marriage. He said: She lived her 74 years to the fullest. She had done practically everything she wanted, she didn't have any type of barrier or any type of fear that limited her. Her body was placed on display at the National Congress building in Buenos Aires for the public to pay their respects, and were ordered three days of national mourning. Thousands had queued by the end of the day.

Sosa's obituary in The Daily Telegraph said she was an unrivalled interpreter of works by her compatriot, the Argentine Atahualpa Yupanqui, and Chile's Violeta Parra. Helen Popper of Reuters reported her death by saying she fought South America's dictators with her voice and became a giant of contemporary Latin American music. 

Sosa received three Latin Grammy nominations for her album, in 2009 . She went on to win Best Folk Album about a month after her death.

More information: Los Angeles Times

Thank you, life, for giving me so much.
She gave me the wandering of my tired feet.
With them I've walked cities and puddles

valleys and deserts, mountains and plains
and your house, your street and your courtyard.  

Violeta Parra / Mercedes Sosa