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To Paris and Back: Violeta Parra's Transnational Performance of Authenticity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2015

Ericka Kim Verba
Ericka Kim Verba*
Affiliation:
California State University, Dominguez Hills, Carson, California
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Extract

In 1964, at what was surely the acme of her career, Violeta Parra became the first Latin American to have a solo show at the Louvre. During the five-odd weeks that her artwork was on display, Parra was at the museum every day. She chatted with visitors, put finishing touches on her tapestries, sang songs, played her guitar, served empanadas, and turned the exposition hall into a veritable Chilean ramada. The exhibit received favorable reviews in the press, and was visited by important dignitaries and a who's who of the Parisian and expatriate Latin American artistic community. Parra sold several of her tapestries, including one to the Baroness Rothschild. By all accounts, the show was a great success.

Type
Tibesar Lecture
Information
The Americas , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , October 2013 , pp. 269 - 302
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2013 

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References

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of The Americas along with editor Eric Zolov for their insight¬ful comments and suggestions. This article is part of a larger research project on the life and times of Violeta Parra. An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at The Aesthetic of Revolt: Latin America in the 1960s, a conference held at the Latin American Studies Center, University of Maryland, College Park, in April 2011. My thanks to conference organizers Mary Kay Vaughan and Karin Rosemblatt for the opportunity and support. 1 also thank Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Angi Neff, and Cynthia Verba for close readings and valu¬able suggestions on later drafts, and Heidi Tinsman, Fernando Rios, Angela Vergara, Kimberly Davis, Jedrek Mularski, and Claudia Vizcarra for help along the way. My thanks to archivists Guillemette Delaporte at the Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, and Aaron M. Bittel at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive for their generous assistance with my research, and to the California State University Domínguez Hills Research, Schol¬arship and Creative Activities Program Committee and the Emeriti Faculty Association for their support. Finally, and as promised, I dedicate this article to my son, David César, in gratitude for his patience and much-appreciated sense of humor.

1. A temporary shelter made from branches and leaves where people gather to eat, drink, and dance. Ramadas are usually set up in parks or other public spaces in conjunction with the commemoration of Chile’s Independence Day, September 18th.

2. Stambuk, Patricia M. and Bravo, Patricia, Violeta Parra: el canto de todos (Santiago: Pehuén Editores, 2011), pp. 125–126.Google Scholar Note: This is a revised and augmented version of the book that has appeared in various previous editions under the title, Gracias a la Vida. Violeta Parra, Testimonio.

3. Carlos Moria Lynch to Jean Cassou, n.d., dossier of the Exposition “Violetta [sic] Parra: tapisseries, peintures, sculptures,” Archives of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. This and all other translations are by the author.

4. Peterson, Richard A., Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Bendix, Regina, In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997), p. 8.Google Scholar The bibliography on authenticity is extensive, and includes Bigenho, Michelle, Sounding Indigenous. Authenticity in Bolivian Music Performance (New York: Palgrave, 2002);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Clifford, James, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988);Google Scholar Canclini, Néstor García, Hybrid Cultures. Strategies for Entering and Leaving Moder¬nity, Chiappali, Christopher L. and López, Silvia L., trans. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995);Google Scholar Grazian, David, Blue Chicago. The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2003);Google Scholar and Peter, Kivy, Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

6. See for example: Hagedorn, Katherine J., Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santería (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001);Google Scholar Hernandez, Deborah Pacini, “Dancing with the Enemy: Cuban Popular Music, Race, Authenticity, and the World-Music Landscape,” Latin American Per¬spectives 25:3 (May 1998), pp. 110–125;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Pedelty, Mark, “The Bolero: The Birth, Life, and Decline of Mexi¬can Modernity,” Latin American Music Review 20:1 (Spring-Summer 1999), pp. 30–58;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Wade, Peter, Music, Race, and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000);Google Scholar and Zolov, Eric, Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Turino, Thomas, “Are We Global Yet? Globalist Discourse, Cultural Formations and the Study of Zimbabwean Popular Music,” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 12:2 (2003), pp. 51–79; p. 62.Google Scholar My thanks to Fernando Rlos, who first introduced me to Turino's conceptualization of cosmopolitanism, and whose research on the Andean music scene in Paris during the 1960s, and particularly the Parra family’s involvement in it, is crucial to my own analysis. Rios, “La Flûte Indienne: The Early History of Andean Folkloric-Popular Music in France and its Impact on Nueva Canción” Latin American Music Review 29:2 (Fall-Winter 2008), pp. 145–189.

8. Turino identifies two other prominent cosmopolitan cultural formations of the second half of the twentieth century: modernist-socialist and fundamentalist-Islamic. “Are We Global Yet?” p. 62.

9. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Stanford, Calif: Stanford Uni¬versity Press, 1991), p. 6. Emphasis is in the original.

10. That scholars in the field of transcultural studies reject essentializing dichotomies in our analyses of cultural processes is sometimes misconstrued to imply that we consider them of no consequence. This is not the case.

11. Interest in Parra has grown exponentially in the decades since her death, to the point that the term “Violetamania” has been coined to name the phenomenon. See Moreno, Alberto, “Violeta Parra and La Nueva Canción Chilena,” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 5 (1986), pp. 108–125;Google Scholar Farfán, Cristian González and Chiappe, Gabriela Bravo, Ecos del tiempo subterráneo: las peñas en Santiago durante el rég¬imen militar (1973–1983) (Santiago: LOM, 2009);Google Scholar and McClennen, Sophia A., “Chilex: The Economy of Transnational Media Culture,” Cultural Logic: An Electronic Journal of Marxist Thought and Practice 3:1 (2000), http://eserver.org/clogic/3-l&2/mcclennen.html (accessed July 18, 2013).Google Scholar

12. A Google search for her name netted 2,590,000 results, while a YouTube recording of Parra singing her best-known song, “Gracias a la vida,” registered 1,958,551 hits. Both searches were conducted April 7, 2012.

13. Parra, Angel, Violeta se fue a los cielos (Santiago: Catalonia, 2006);Google Scholar Parra, Isabel, El libro mayor de Vio¬leta Parra (Santiago: Editorial Cuarto Propio, 2009);Google Scholar and Stambuk et al., Violeta Parra.

14. The online catalog of the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile provides a comprehensive, up-to-date bibliography of works on Parra, scholarly and otherwise. Biographies include: Kerschen, Karen, Violeta Parra: By the Whim of the Wind (Albuquerque, N.M.: ABQ Press, 2010);Google Scholar Malizia, Diana, Violeta Parra: mujer de cuerpo entero (Buenos Aires, Capital Intelectual, 2008);Google Scholar Manns, Patricio, Violeta Parra: la guitarra indócil (Concep¬ción: LAR, 1986);Google Scholar Oviedo, Carmen, Mentira todo lo cierto: tras la huella de Violeta Parra (Santiago: Editorial Universitaria, 1990);Google Scholar and Sáez, Fernando, Violeta Parra: la vida intranquila, biografìa esencial (Santiago: Edi¬torial Sudamericana, 1999).Google Scholar Echeverría, Monica wrote the novel, To Violeta (Santiago: Plaza Janes, 2010).Google Scholar The biopic is Violeta se fue a los cielos, directed by Andrés Wood, and based on the book of the same title by Ángel Parra. The film won the 2012 Sundance World Cinema Dramatic Jury Prize.

15. The gender bias in Parra’s persistent reification may be seen in the contrast in how she and Nicanor Parra, her brother and a renowned poet, are portrayed in biographical and literary studies. The siblings shared the same background, and both drew inspiration from Chilean folklore. Nicanor, however, has been allowed to “grow up” into a modern artist, while Parra remains “pure,” “natural,” “campesina,” “one of the people”—in short, authentic. See for example Quezada, Jaime, Nicanor Parra de cuerpo entero (Santiago: Edi¬torial Andrés Bello, 2007);Google Scholar Szmulewicz, Efraín, Nicanor Parra: biografía emotiva (Santiago: Ediciones Rumbos, 1988);Google Scholar and Zúñiga, Pamela, El mundo de Nicanor Parra: antibiografìa (Santiago: Zig-Zag, 1995).Google Scholar

16. The museum’s selection committee initially rejected Parra’s proposal, and the show went forward only after a sympathetic museum official convinced them to reconsider.

17. Parra, Violeta to Claro, Amparo, cited in Stambuk et al., Violeta Parra, p. 126.Google Scholar

18. Clifford, , Predicament of Culture, p. 228.Google Scholar

19. The duo performed a pan-Latin American repertoire of boleros, corridos, rancheras, tangos, tonadas, and cuecas at a variety of clubs in Santiago from the late 1940s to the early 1950s. They also recorded several singles with RCA Victor. See Alcalde, Alfonso, Toda Violeta Parra (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1974), pp. 25–23, 36–37;Google Scholar Pablo, Juan González and Claudio Rolle, Historia social de la música popular en Chile, 1890–1950 (Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 2004), p. 435;Google Scholar Sáez, , Violeta Parra, pp. 47–53;Google Scholar and Stambuk, et al., Violeta Parra, pp. 51–61.Google Scholar For a list of the duo’s RCA Victor recordings, see Parra, Isabel, Libro mayor, p. 231.Google Scholar

20. González, Juan Pablo, Ohlsen, Oscar, and Rolle, Claudio, Historia social de la música popular en Chile, 1950–1970 (Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile, 2009), pp. 311–367.Google Scholar Together, the two tomes by self-professed “académicos-fanáticos” González and Rolle, and (for the second volume) Ohlsen, offer copious information on virtually every aspect of Chilean música popular for the period from 1890 to 1970.

21. Collier, Simon and Sater, William, A History of Chile, 1808-2004 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 291.Google Scholar

22. The Chilean Communist Party was banned from 1948 to 1958 under the so-called “Law for the Permanent Defense of Democracy.” For a history of this period, see Huneeus, Carlos, La Guerra Fría Chilena: Gabriel González Videla y la ley maldita (Santiago: Debate, 2009);Google Scholar and Ulianova, Olga, “Algunas reflexiones sobre la Guerra Fría desde el fin del mundo,” in Ampliando miradas: Chile y su historia en un tiempo global, Fernando Purcell and Alfredo Riquelme, eds., (Santiago: RIL Editores, 2009), pp. 235–260.Google Scholar Anti-Commu¬nist government repression in Chile does not appear to have had as direct an adverse effect on the individual careers of leftist Chilean folk musicians active in the 1950s as McCarthyism had on their U.S. counterparts during that period.

23. See Atkinson, David, “The English Revival Canon: Child Ballads and the Invention of Tradition,” Journal of American Folklore 114:453 (Summer 2001), pp. 370–380;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Austerlitz, Paul, “Birch-Bark Horns and Jazz in the National Imagination: The Finnish Folk Music Vogue in Historical Perspective,” Ethnomusicology 44:2 (Spring-Summer 2000), pp. 183–212;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Brocken, Michael, The British Folk Revival: 1944–2002 (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2003);Google Scholar Cantwell, Robert, When We Were Good: Class and Culture in the Folk Revival (Cam¬bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996);Google Scholar Chamosa, Oscar, The Argentine Folklore Movement: Sugar Elites, Criollo Workers, and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism, 1900–1955 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010), and Breve historia del movimiento folclòrico argentino: cultura, identidad y nación (Barcelona: EDHASA, 2012);Google Scholar Cohen, Ronald D., Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940-1970 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002);Google Scholar Eyerman, Ron and Barretta, Scott, “From the 30s to the 60s: The Folk Music Revival in the United States,” Theory and Society 25:4 (August 1996), pp. 501–543;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Gonczy, Daniel J., “The Folk Music Movement of the 1960s: Its Rise and Fall,” Popular Music and Society 10 (1985), pp. 15–31;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Gregory, E. David, “Lomax in London: Alan Lomax, the BBC and the Folk-Song Revival in England, 1950–1958,” Folk Music Journal 8:2 (2002), pp. 136–169;Google Scholar Marchini, Dario, No toquen: músicos populares, gobierno y sociedad (Buenos Aires: Catálogos, 2008), pp. 125–162;Google Scholar Mitchell, Gillian A.M., “Visions of Diversity: Cultural Pluralism and the Nation in the Folk Music Revival Movements of the United States and Canada, 1958–1965,” Journal of American Studies 40:3 (December 2006), pp. 593–614;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Reuss, Richard A., “American Folksongs and Left-Wing Politics, 1935–1956,” Journal of the Folk¬lore Institute 12:2/3 (1975), pp. 89–111;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Rosenberg, Neil, Transforming Tradition: Folk Music Revivals Examined (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993).Google Scholar

24. González et al. suggest that the Chilean folkloric performances of the 1950s were influenced and perhaps even inspired by post-World War II promotions of folklore in the Soviet bloc and its spheres of influence: Historia Social, 1950–1970, p. 312. In contrast with the Soviet Union’s more straightforward and consistent relationship to folk music performance, that of the U.S. during the Cold War was complex. On one hand, the U.S. supported the dissemination of American folkloric traditions through recordings, radio, and performance, though never on the scale of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, U.S. Cold War ideology cast the U.S. as the great modernizer and promoter of freedom and thus tended to advocate a modernist “uni¬versal” culture as superior to the provincialism and idiosyncrasy of national, ethnic, or local cultures. See Franco, Jean, The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City: Latin America in the Cold War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002).Google Scholar Jazz and modern art were the preferred emissaries of this universal culture. The Soviet Union’s strong support for the “music of the people” may have contributed, additionally, to U.S. ambivalence toward folk music, which during McCarthyism became associated with “un-American” or Communist sym¬pathizers such as Pete Seeger and others (see works on the U.S. folk music revival in n23). For U.S. support of Chilean folklorists as part of the Good Neighbor policies of the 1940s, see Corinne, A. Pernet, “The Pop¬ular Fronts and Folklore: Chilean Cultural Institutions, Nationalism and Pan-Americanism, 1936–1948,” in The Norte-Americanización of Latin America?, König, Hans-Joachim and Rinke, Stefan, eds. (Stuttgart: Heinz Verlag, 2004), pp. 253–277.Google Scholar

25. Hagedorn, , Divine Utterances, pp.9–12.Google Scholar

26. Rios, , “La Flute Indienne,” p. 147.Google Scholar

27. A huasa, also known as a china, is the female partner of the huaso or cowboy.

28. “Nueva folklorista: Gabriela Pizarra,” Ecran 1344 (October 23, 1956), p. 21.

29. Klimpel, Felicitas lists 16 women (including Margot Loyola, Gabriela Pizarro, and Violeta Parra) under the category “Música folklórica (Investigadores, Recopiladores y Compositoras)” in her book La Mujer Chilena (El aporte femenino al progreso de Chile), 1910–1960 (Santiago: Editorial Andrés Bello, 1962), pp. 202–203.Google Scholar

30. González, et al., Historia Social, 1950–1970, p. 324.Google Scholar

31. Quote from a 1957 radio interview with Violeta Parra on Radio Chilena. Cited in Oviedo, , Mentira todo lo cierto, p. 56.Google Scholar

32. For a history of the proliferation of huaso musical groups in Chile during the first half of the twenti¬eth century, see González, et al., Historia Social, 1890–1950, pp. 363–20.Google Scholar By the 1950s, the figure of the Chilean huaso was a firmly established and versatile national icon. For a history of his transformation from country bump¬kin to national symbol, see Barr-Melej, Patrick, “Cowboys and Constructions: Nationalist Representations of Pas¬toral Life in Post-Portalian Chile,” Journal of Latin American Studies 30 (1998), pp. 35–61 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Reforming Chile: Cultural Politics, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Middle Class (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); and Rinke, Stefan, Cultura de Masas: Reforma y Nacionalismo en Chile, 1910–1930 (Santiago: DIBAM, 2002).Google Scholar For a discussion of the more contemporary class and ethnic connotations of the huaso, see Sznajder, Mario, “Who is Chilean? The Mapuche, the Huaso and the Roto as Basic Symbols of Chilean Collec¬tive Identity,” in Constructing Collective Identities and Shaping Public Spheres: Latift American Paths, Roniger, Luis and Snajder, Mario, eds. (Brighton, U.K.: Sussex Academic Press, 1998), pp. 199–216.Google Scholar

33. See Jara, Joan, An Unfinished Song (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1984), p. 47;Google Scholar and Rodríguez Musso, Osvaldo, La nueva canción chilena (Havana: Casa de las Américas, 1988), pp. 72–73.Google Scholar Nueva canción artists Victor Jara and Rolando Alarcón were both members of Cuncumén at one point.

34. According to Benjamin MacKenna, a member of Los Huasos Quincheros and a well-known derechista, “true harmony” reigned between “those artists that could have been classified as leftist and those of us who did not share their position” during the period. Cited in González, , et al., Historia Social, 1950–1970, p. 311.Google Scholar I have not encountered analogous claims by leftist musicians. Mularski, Jedrek, whose dissertation, “Music and Chile’s Democratic Crisis: Song and the Formation of Political Identities, 1940–1973” (Univer¬sity of California San Diego, 2012)Google Scholar examines the relationship between music and political identities in Chile, concurs that, generally, folk music crossed partisan lines during the 1950s. Personal communication, Septem¬ber 2012.

35. For a groundbreaking study of, among other topics, how Chilean soccer reflected the growing polit¬ical polarization of the 1960s, see Elsey, Brenda, Citizens and Sportsmen: Fútbol and Politics in Twentieth-Cen¬tury Chile (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar One could make the argument that, paradoxically, Com-munist sympathizer Violeta Parra has become a national icon in today’s neoliberal Chile. She has her own postage stamp, and the Chilean equivalent of the Grammy award carries her name. For a blistering critique of the distorting effects of the neoliberal marketplace on historical memory, see McClennen, “Chilex.”

36. Apparently the lipstick was an anomaly, as Parra rarely wore makeup on or off the stage by that point in her life.

37. Navasal, Marina de, “Conozca a Violeta Parra,” Ecran 1220 (June 8, 1954), pp. 18, 20.Google Scholar

38. To my knowledge, Parra never joined the Chilean Communist Party. She was no doubt, however, a lifelong sympathizer.

39. Although the Chilean new song movement emerged in the early 1960s, it did not get its name until the first Festival de la Nueva Canción, organized by radio disc jockey Ricardo García in Santiago, 1969.

40. Vicuña, Magdalena, “Violeta Parra, hermana mayor de los cantores populares,” Revista Musical Chilena 60 (July-August 1958), p. 72.Google Scholar

41. Stambuk, et al., Violeta Parra, p. 106.Google Scholar

42. Jodorowsky, Alejandro, The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky: The Creator of El Topo (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2008), pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

43. Bigenho, , Sounding Indigenous, p. 20.Google Scholar

44. Vicuña, , “Violeta Parra,” p. 77.Google Scholar

45. “Cronique Artistique—Violeta Parra—Colette Rodde,” Tribune de Lausanne (May 11, 1964), n.pag.

46. The comparison with Nicanor Parra, university professor and world-renowned modern poet, pro¬vides evidence of how profoundly each sibling’s respective artistic career was shaped by gender.

47. José María Arguedas makes this point at an academic roundtable organized in Parra’s eulogy. “Análisis de un genio popular hacen artistas y escritores: Violeta Parra,” Revista de Educación (Santiago, Chile) 13 (1968), p. 72.

48. Quoted in Alcalde, , Toda Violeta Parra, p. 41.Google Scholar

49. Brumagne’s documentary, originally made for Swiss television, is excerpted in Luis, R. Vera’s docu¬mentary, Viola Chilensis (Alerce, Chile: La Otra Música, 2006).Google Scholar It is also easily accessible at www.youtube.com. A Spanish translation of the interview, “Entrevista a Violeta Parra, realizada en su taller en Ginebra, Suiza, 1965,” is available at the Fundación Violeta Parra website: (accessed July 12, 2011).

50. Isabel, Parra, Libro mayor, p. 58.Google Scholar

51. The first impressions of Parra by Joan Jara (Victor Jara’s wife) and record producer Rubén Nouzeilles are strikingly similar to those of Garcia, and thus indicative of how uniformly Parra’s otherness was perceived by those in the artistic circles in which she moved. Jara, , An Unfinished Song, p. 45;Google Scholar Stambuk, et al., Violeta Parra, p. 101.Google Scholar

52. See Parra’s letters published in Isabel Parra, Libro mayor.

53. A traditional Chilean song style, a direct descendent of the décima espinela of medieval Spain. Its most definitive instrument is the guitarrón, a 25-string guitar unique to the Chilean countryside.

54. The guitarrón was believed to be on the verge of extinction before Parra’s “rediscovery” of it. For more on the guitarrón, including a discussion of Parra’s role in its revival, see Emily Jean, Pinkerton, “The Chilean Guitarrón: The Social, Political, and Gendered Life of a Folk Instrument,”(Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2007).Google Scholar For an indepth discussion of the role Parra played in the “discovery” of a “hidden” authentic Chilean culture, see Jorge Aravena, Décart, “Opciones armónicas, estilo musical y construcción iden¬titaria: una aproximación al aporte de Violeta Parra en relación con la música típica,” Revista Musical Chilena 55:196 (July 2001).Google Scholar

55. For an example of the Parra family dressed as “andinos,” see photograph no. 16 of the section “Iconografia” in Isabel Parra, Libro mayor, n.pag. More photographs of Violeta Parra and family members per¬forming in costume are available at the Fundación Violeta Parra website, http://www.violetaparra.cl/.

56. EMI Odeón Chilena (1956), LDC-36019. The covers of this and many other Parra recordings are digitally reproduced at http://www.cancioneros.eom/nd/2673/4/el-folklore-de-chile-violeta-parra. (Accessed September 2, 2012).

57. For a more in-depth discussion of the radio show, see my article, “Violeta Parra, Radio Chilena, and the ‘Battle in Defense of the Authentic’ during the 1950s in Chile,” Studies in Latin American Popular Cul¬ture 26 (2007), pp.151–165. Since publication, I have learned that Radio Chilena was not an independent station, as claimed, but a project of the progressive Chilean cleric Cardinal José María Caro. This error, though regrettable, does not fundamentally alter the substance of my analysis.

58. Stambuk, et.al., Violeta Parra, p. 96–97.Google Scholar My emphasis.

59. Parra’s boîte-style attire is reminiscent of Edith Piafs trademark performance outfit of a simple black dress. For a discussion of the ernie quality of Parra’s urban performance style, see Rodrigo Torres, Alvarado, “Cantar la diferencia: Violeta Parra y la canción chilena,” Revista Musical Chilena 58:201 (January-June 2004).Google Scholar

60. Toda Violeta Parra: el folklore de Chile, Vol. VIII, EMI Odeón Chilena (I960), LDC-36344; Violeta Parra, recordando a Chile ( Una chilena en Paris), EMI Odeón Chilena (1965), LDC-36533; and Las últimas composiciones de Violeta Parra, RCA Victor, Chile (1966), CML-2456. The last LP is technically not a solo album; although Parra does all of the singing, she is at times accompanied instrumentally by Isabel and Angel Parra, and by Alberto Zapicán. Parra’s first recording in this new artistic phase as composer/song writer of non¬commercial music was the EP Violeta Parra: composiciones para guitarra. It is also her sole recording of purely instrumental music, and includes two of her “anti-cuecas.” Odeón, Chilena (1957), MSOD/E-51020.

61. The sole exceptions are Parra’s settings of two poems, one by Pablo Neruda and the other by her brother Nicanor.

62. A small guitar originally from the Andean region, often made from the back of an armadillo.

63. Bigenho, , Sounding Indigenous, pp. 17–18.Google Scholar

64. Jara, , An Unfinished Song, p. 49;Google Scholar Isabel, Parra, Libro mayor, p. 110.Google Scholar

65. Violeta Parra, Fundación, “El viaje de las obras,” in Violeta Parra, obra visual (Santiago: Ocho Libros Editores, 2007), p. 19.Google Scholar See also Isabel, Parra Libro mayor, p. 110;Google Scholar and Sáez, , Violeta Parra, pp. 113–114.Google Scholar

66. Parra wears the dress and explains its origins in Brumagne's documentary (see n49).

67. Excerpted in Isabel, Parra, Libro mayor, p. 206.Google Scholar

68. Ellipses in the original text. “Ángel e Isabel Parra: ‘Nuestro mayor orgullo es nuestra madre,’” Rincón Juvenil 81 (July 6, 1966), p. 7.

69. “Vengan a cantar junto a mí,” interview published in the “Suplemento Dominical” of El Mercurio (October 1966). Transcription available at Fundación Violeta Parra website, accessed July 12, 2011.

70. Isabel, Parra, Libro mayor, p. 209.Google Scholar

71. José, Joaquín Brunner, Un espejo trizado: ensayos sobre cultura y políticas culturales (Santiago: FLACSO, 1988), p. 248.Google Scholar See also Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity.

72. The 1950s and 1960s saw a “flood” of rural migrants to Santiago, and the corresponding expan¬sion of shantytowns on the outskirts of the city. Collier and Sater estimate that about a half million people lived in Santiago shantytowns by the mid-1960s. History of Chile, p. 294.

73. Violeta, Isabel, and Ángel Parra, the band Cuncumén (with Rolando Alarcón and Victor Jara) and a host of other musicians from Chile and all parts of Latin America traveled to Europe to perform at Soviet-sponsored World Festivals of Youth and Students during the 1950s and 1960s. The fact that so many of these artists eventually made their way west to Paris, however, indicates that the sensibilities and exigencies of mod¬ernist-capitalist cosmopolitanism were more influential in shaping their respective performing careers than those associated with modernist-socialist cosmopolitanism.

74. For more on L’Escale, see Rios, , “La Flûte Indienne,” pp. 150–151.Google Scholar

75. “Violeta Parra hizo llorar a los franceses,” Ecran 1351 (December 11,1956), p. 19. The article con¬sists of excerpts from a letter to Chilean sound engineer Luis Marcos Stuven.

76. Here I borrow Daniel J. Sherman’s wording from his study of French primitivism during this period, convinced that it applies equally to exoticism. French Primitivism and the Ends of Empire, 1945–1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 3.

77. Looseley, David L., Popular Music in Contemporary France: Authenticity, Politics, and Debate, (Oxford: Berg, 2003), p. 11.Google Scholar

78. Sherman, French Primitivism; Stova, Tyler, France Since the Second World War (New York: Long¬man, 2002).Google Scholar

79. For a discussion of the Anglophile rock invasion of France, see Looseley, , Popular Music, pp. 21–35.Google Scholar

80. Insert, “Chants et danses du Chili (Vols. I et II). Violeta Parra, guitare et chant,” Le Chant du Monde (1956), LDY-4060-4071.

81. In contrast with the male huaso costume, which dates back to the 1920s, the huasa costume was not clearly established until the 1940s. Gonzalez et al. credit música típica singer Silvia Infantes with its design, inspired by a career in acting where she learned the importance of wardrobe. Historia Social, 1950–1970, p. 326. Their research confirms Chilean composer Alfonso Letelier’s earlier assessment that “the woman’s costume that the folklorists tend to perform in is totally invented.” “In Memoriam: Violeta Parra,” Revista Musical Chilena 21:100 (April-June 1967), p. 110.

82. On Alan Lomax’s career at the BBC, see Gregory, “Lomax in London.”

83. Index entry for sound recording T0171, Alan Lomax Collection (AFC 2004/004), American Folk-life Center, Library of Congress. The recording is accessible online through the Association for Cultural Equity’s website, http://research.culturalequity.org/get-audio-ix.do;jsessionid=3D456FFC77207BCA6 D5EE86F478B7A87?ix=recording&id=12971:113&idType=subregion&sortBy=abc (accessed July 19, 2013).

84. Ellipsis in the original article. Navasal, Marina de, “Volvió Violeta Parra: Triunfo en Europa. Pronto regreso al viejo mundo,” Ecran 1354 (January 1, 1957), p. 23.Google Scholar The article allows for a reading that differs from the original intent of the lyrics, reproduced in the Ecran piece, of Parra’s nostalgic song “¡Por qué me vine de Chile?”: Antes de salir de Chile / yo no supe comprender / lo que vale ser chilena ¡ Ahora si que lo sé! (Before I left Chile / I did not understand / The value of being Chilean / Now I understand it!).

85. Rios, “La Flûte Indienne.’”

86. From Vera’s documentary, Viola Chilensis.

87. Chants et danses du Chili: Violeta Parra, chant et guitare, Vol. 2, Le Chant du Monde (1956), LDY-4071. To be clear, there is no drumming, conga or otherwise, recorded on the album—just, as advertised, Violeta Parra on song and guitar.

88. A bamboo flute with a notched mouthpiece, originally from the Andean region.

89. Parra, Violeta, Poésie populaire des Andes (Paris: François Maspero, 1965).Google Scholar

90. Chants et danses du Chili: Violeta Parra,guitare et chant, Le Chant du Monde (1963) LD-S-4271.

91. Musso, Rodríguez, La nueva canción, p. 73.Google Scholar Rodríguez ascribes a political motivation to Parra’s cos¬tume shift: “she realized that neither the bourgeois nor the china costumes would work, so she replaced them with a common costume for both men and women of a long poncho and sandals.” I would venture that the costume change was also intended to capitalize on the Andean music craze.

92. Rios, “La Flûte Indienne.” For a discussion of the Chilean Andean music scene, including its nueva canción component, see González, et al., Historia Social, 1950–1970, pp. 357–367.Google Scholar

93. “Entrevista a Violeta Parra.” Brumagne’s account of her first encounter with Parra at one of her exhibits epitomizes the European exoticizing/indigenousizing gaze that Parra may well have been respond¬ing to: “I no longer knew where I was on that rainy wintry day. As if by magic, the walls had disappeared, leaving in their place vast Andean plateaus, under a clear, high altitude sun. Indian men and women, dressed in ponchos, came and went in the décor that Violeta had created, at ten o’clock in the morning, in this place without history, thousands of kilometres from her native Chile!” Brumagne, , Qui se souvient de sa (Lau¬sanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1992), p. 135.Google Scholar

94. Atahualpa Yupanqui was another. See Rios, , “La Flûte Indienne” pp. 153–155.Google Scholar For more on Yupan-qui’s French connection, see Orquera, Fabiola, “From the Andes to Paris: Atahualpa Yupanqui, the Commu¬nist Party, and the Latin American Folksong Movement,” in Red Strains: Music and Communism Outside the Communist Bloc, Robert, Adlington, ed. (Oxford University Press/British Academy: 2013).Google Scholar

95. Rios, , “La Flûte Indienne” pp. 157–158.Google Scholar

96. González-Batlle, Fanchita, “Introduction,” Poésie populaire des Andes, p. 8.Google Scholar Both Maspero’s publishing house and the record label Le Chant du Monde were associated with international communism. They thus offer examples of the cultural output of communist-affiliated institutions when modernist-socialist con-ceptualizations of the authentic are crossed by modernist-capitalist market forces. In the case of Le Chant du Monde, the two record covers discussed in this article strongly suggest that the label’s producers were more interested in sales than accuracy when packaging the authentic music of the peoples of the world. For a his¬tory of the record label, see Casanova, Vincent, “Jalons pour une histoire du Chant du Monde. À l’heure de la guerre froide (1945–1953),” Bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin 18 (Spring 2004),Google Scholar available at http://ipr.univ-parisl.fr/spip.php?article210 (accessed January 11,2012). See also the record company’s dig¬ital brochure, “History of Le Chant du Monde,” available at http://cdm.harmonia-mundi.biz/ _media/cdm_digital_booklet_en.pdf (accessed September 27, 2012).

97. “Trois variations sur themes populaires,” Le Monde, (April 17, 1964), p. 12.

98. Violeta Parra to Marie-Magdeleine Brumagne, cited in Brumagne, Qui se souvient…?, p. 140.

99. McClennen, , “Chilex,” p. 4.Google Scholar

100. Violeta Parra, Canto y guitarra, Vol. I. A conceptual cousin to the practice of advertising Parra’s European success was to lament that Europeans were better able to appreciate true Chilean talent than Chileans themselves. See for example the piece penned by a regular Ecran columnist writing under the pseu¬donym “Hablador” and decrying the lack of interest in Chile for Parra’s recordings of folk music: “Los pro¬fetas fuera de casa… y otros detalles …,” Ecran 1322 (May 22, 1956), pp. 20–21.

101. Parra, Isabel, Libro mayor, p. 58.Google Scholar

102. Stambuk, et al., Violeta Parra, p, 127.Google Scholar

103. “Análisis de un genio,” p. 70.

104. See Elsey, , Citizens and Sportsmen, pp. 210–211;Google Scholar and Salazar, Gabrieland Pinto, Julio, Historia Contemporánea de Chile: niñez y juventud, Vol. 5 (Santiago: LOM, 2002).Google Scholar Patrick Barr-Melej’s forthcoming book promises to be enlightening on the topic of youth culture in Chile. Psychedelic Chile: Youth, Counter¬ culture, and Politics on the Road to Socialism and Dictatorship (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming).

105. Rios, , “La Flute Indienne” pp. 153–154.Google Scholar

106. For the impact of Argentine folk musicians on the Chilean folk music scene, see Car¬rasco, Sergio H., “Victor Jara: ΈΙ plagio, buen bocado por mediocridad,’” El Siglo (September 18, 1966), reproduced in Acevedo, Claudio et al., Victor Jara: Obra Musical Completa (Santiago: Fundación Víctor Jara, 1997), p. 38;Google Scholar González, et al., Historia Social, 1950–1970, pp. 355 and 446–454;Google Scholar and Jara, , An Unfinished Song, pp. 82–83.Google Scholar

107. As the participation of former Cuncumén band members Alarcón and Jara demonstrates, several of the 1950s folklorists were active in the 1960s new song movement as well.

108. Inés Sáez, María, “Un año de folklore en la Peña de los Parra,” Rincón Juvenil 72 (May 4, 1966), p. 4.Google Scholar The word “pullover” appears in English in the Spanish original.

109. In 1965, Ecran provided a forum for a debate on whether folkloric groups should continue to wear the huaso costume, among other topics. Participants included Hernán Arenas, musical director of Silvia Infantas y los Condores, Luis Enrique Urquidi, musical director of Los Cuatro Cuartos, members of the band Los de Santiago, Esther Soré, Angel Parra, Osvaldo Silva, and Camilo Fernández. See “Proceso al Folklore,” Ecran 1784 (April 6, 1965), pp. 39–41, 1788 (May 5, 1965), pp. 78–79; 1790 (May 15, 1965), pp. 43–45; 1794 (June 15, 1965), pp. 44–45.

110. Sáez, , “Un año de folklore,” pp. 4–5.Google Scholar The bibliography on the Chilean nueva canción movement is substantial, and includes Barraza, Fernando, La nueva canción chilena (Santiago: Quimantú, 1972);Google Scholar Largo Farias, René Gilberto, La nueva canción chilena (Mexico: Casa de Chile, 1977);Google Scholar Musso, Rodríguez, La nueva canción; and “Nueva canción” in González, et al., Historia Social, 1950–1970, pp. 371–435.Google Scholar

111. González, et al., Historia Social, 1950–1970, p. 137.Google Scholar

112. Cited in Bermejo, González, “Isabel Parra,” Crisis 3:28 (August 1975), p. 48.Google Scholar

113. González, et al. note that “the idea of stepping outside of the national borders… in folklore has always been resisted in Chile.” Historia Social, 1950–1970, p. 355.Google Scholar Parra confirms this, as for a time she tried very hard to dissuade Ángel Parra from performing songs by Atahualpa Yupanqui. Parra, Ángel, Violeta se file, p. 158;Google Scholar Parra, Isabel, Libro mayor, 108.Google Scholar By the mid-1960s, however, Parra had become less rigidly nationalis¬tic; she performed on instruments from other Latin American countries, and even composed a few songs on pan-Latin American themes. Her repertoire, however, remained consistently and exclusively the folk songs she collected in Chile and her own compositions.

114. Barraza lists only three women performers on his 1972 roster of nueva canción artists (Charo Cofre, Isabel Parra, and Silvia Urbina). La nueva canción, pp. 86–93. Their reduced number stands in contrast to the 16 women folklorists listed in Klimpel’s La Mujer Chilena (see n29).

115. Historia Social, 1950-1970, p. 408. Elsey seems to make the opposite claim in noting that the new song movement “offered opportunities for female artists,” that is until one realizes her assessment is made in implicit contrast to the even more male-exclusive world of soccer. Elsey, , Citizens and Sportsmen, p. 222.Google Scholar

116. Eduardo Carrasco, quoted in Jara, , An Unfinished Song, p. 107.Google Scholar

117. This may also explain why an experimental female version of Quilapayún, dressed in long black skirts instead of ponchos, never really got off the ground. Jara, , An Unfinished Song, p. 197.Google Scholar Women’s periph¬eral position within the Chilean new song movement, and the organized left in general, is perhaps best encap-sulated in the lyrics of the unofficial hymn of the Unidad Popular and later, the Chilean resistance, “El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido”—written, not coincidently, by Quilapayún band member Sergio Ortega. It announces—tragically, in hindsight—the imminent triumph of el pueblo (read “working class”). Its last stanza chimes in: “And you are there too, mujer, with strength and courage, united with the worker.” “El Pueblo Unido,” http://unionsong.com/u443.html (accessed September 14, 2012).

118. Elsey, , Citizens and Sportsmen, p. 210.Google Scholar

119. Osmur (pseud.), “Ángel e Isabel Parra,” pp. 6–7.

120. See Gonzalez, et al., Historia Social, 1950–1970, pp. 235–236.Google Scholar

121. Alfonso Molina Leiva, “Vengan a cantar junto a mi.”

122. The tributes and commemorations began immediately after her death in Chile, and continue to this day throughout the world. Nueva canción artist Patricio Manns has insisted in a fairly recent interview that Parra’s status as “mother” of the new song movement is a myth. See Salvador Allende: presencia en la ausencia, Lawner, Miguel et al., eds. (Santiago: LOM/CENDA, 2008), pp. 364, 367.Google Scholar However, Manns seems to stand alone in his opinion.

123. Parra’s somewhat dogmatic insistence that the authentic be interpreted as authentically as possible may have proven an additional liability, as many cosmopolitans may have found her coarse singing style grat¬ing and her repertoire of slow, drawn-out “cantos a lo pueta” monotonous.

124. Cited in Stambuk, et al., Violeta Parra, p. 85.Google Scholar

125. The New Biography: Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 2.

126. The distance between the two has become a trope for explaining Parra’s suicide, her desolation at the end of her life linked to the European heights from which she fell.

127. This same image, by and large, is recreated cinematographically in Andre Wood’s recent biopic, Violeta se fue a los cielos (Wood Productions, Maiz Productions, and Bossa Nova Films, 2011), except that Wood relocates it to the interior of the museum.