Chile Viola

It was in the months since September '73 that the Italian people, its the most beautiful part, showed great spirit. Not sleeping, not eating calm, any new news was expected by the tremor, with palpitation, with hope. Any bad news - and how many came! - Was greeted with despair, but active and reactive despair. For the squares, the streets, demonstrating, singing, the most beautiful youth of Milan, Rome, Padua, Bari, Naples, Livorno was thrilled to fight in Chile under the Pinochet coup, for long weeks of blood, smothered the resistance. The stadium of Santiago, "sponsored" by the killers of the military junta as a concentration camp, became a dominant feature of fascist horror. The absolute evil.

Participation in the tragic event was huge, moving, capillary. Chile was perceived as a neighboring country and something like this. His reformist socialist government was scrutinized, with some suspicion by some, but how interesting! The dignified and tragic end and that last radio call of President Salvador Allende touched the hearts of even the most intransigent revolutionary. It was an epochal event and there is no man or woman of the parliamentary left, of the extra-parliamentary or libertarian, active at that time that do not remember those events well and the climate.

On the basis of this emotion interest in the Chilean and Andean culture grew enormously. The presence of the group Inti Illimani (at the time of the coup they were involved in a European tour and would have been for 15 years exiled in Italy) we endowed it with the ambassadors of the original and rich music. The name together with that of Quilapayùn, Victor Jara, Juan Capra became known not only to the small circle of enthusiasts. It was then that also spread some of the work piece sung by one of the most extraordinary figures of the '900, Violeta Parra. But Violeta was already a piece that had gone on by her own hand. Let us take her songs, the popular instruments which manufactured themselves, the tapestries of wool that had made famous in the world, in a moment of solitude, away from her love, Violeta had fired a shot in the head at the two pm on February 5th of '67.

My name is Violeta Parra, but I'm not so sure. I am fifty years made available to the strong wind. In my life I've been given all very dry and too salty, but this is basically my life, a fight where you do not understand anything. The winter has been installed at the bottom of my soul, and I begin to doubt that somewhere there is a spring, do not do anything at all, it does not sweep. I do not want to see anything at all, now I put the bed in front of the door and go.

The meeting with Violeta is impressive as that with her voice: a loud, rough, strong. A voice that can stand up to all, an uncompromising voice.

I sing the Chilean way
if I have something to tell
and do not play guitar
to get applause.
I sing the difference
that exists between the true and false
otherwise I do not sing.

Violeta Parra

The path of Violeta, through her country and then throughout the world in search of roots music to become root herself, mixes popular culture and anxiety for the future, and the road becomes the soul of an entire continent in search of itself. Like her, equally original, there is only Atahualpa Yupanqui, but as this is a mountain covered by the calm winds, solid and intangible, as Violeta Parra is volcanic, seismic, always agitated by anxiety, bitter, restless. Violeta has the classic technique of the guitar with which purifies Atahualpa Andean melodies, making them clear and transparent as popular lied, not that kind of breath that is scraped and solemn Yupanqui voice scans when looking for solitude and meetings that indie anime seem divinity of the earth. Violetta really uses the hoe as a hand and strikes the strings to free the melody from the bars, the expression is in fact her totalizing crimson and her voice is strident, but always clear and urgent. Violeta is carnal, and on, desperate and sensual. Even in dealing with social issues - which occupy a large part of her repertoire - there is some irony 'and a little more' resigned to the gaucho of Argentina, but the bit violent, irrepressible indignation, fierce derision.

See how they talk about freedom
while they rob us of it, to tell the truth
looks like they preach peace
as we storm the authority.
 
See how we speak of Paradise
while hailing bullets.
What will the Holy Father
living in Rome
while they cut the throats
of his pigeons?

The daughter of a music teacher and a farmer, born in a humble suburb of southern Chile October 4, 1917. The conditions of the family are hard - holding on to the poor use of his father - but the company of Parra brothers, who has ten components, including the largest Nicanor who will be one of the greatest poets of Latin America in ‘900, is happy. That house has been poor, but the atmosphere is exciting: almost all the brothers Parra will deal more or less professionally in music, poetry, folklore and anthropological research. His father, Professor Parra, under the government of General Ibanez is moved away from teaching, perhaps for political reasons, and therefore suffering from a deep depression and spent two years in bed dying, the economic situation of the entire family rushes.

Violeta immature debuts, singing out of necessity, in a duo with her sister, bars, taverns and everywhere you can fashion things that allow you to make some money and some cachet gratuity. It is a repertoire of popular mock songs, fake folklore that mimics the popular style but that trivializes them castrations of their revolutionary power. Nicanor, the intellectual brother who is studying in the capital Santiago (Violeta was unable to attend the first two years of high school), invites her to look deeper. She accepted the challenge and runs through the countryside and slums from house to house by paying with little money or with her own clothes the anonymous informants, the miserable who teaches songs and rhythms. After two years she has recorded everything and worked out for herself a new playing style. The radio program relies on the popular song. The torrential expressive force someone to leave stunned, but the truth of the songs and the belief of the supernatural voice Violeta make her known all over the country. Note, loved by the humble, poorly tolerated by reactionaries and bigots, but in any case not rich. Meanwhile, the fire of hier soul a passion to the claims of workers, is close to the Communist Party and married a railroad union representative, from the marriage were born two children singing: Isabel and Angel. The marriage, however, soon wrecked: even the most common trade union like the "angels of the hearth" that free women. Violeta is married again and has two daughters, but also the second love ends until separation.

The man I love most
within the heart has the gall.
I stripped of its feathers
knowing that it will rain.

An invitation to participate in a festival of Polish music allows her to experience Europe, to stay long in France, where she sings, records and exhibits her arpilleras (splendid tapestries woven with colorful wool) even at the Louvre museum in a personal remained legendary. But since all joy in life is stained with pain, while in Paris, she receives news that her daughter Rosita Clara died of pneumonia at the age of two years (it plays the desperate Rin de l’angelito written from impotence of the distance).

Since then and throughout the decade that is, the life of a Violet will be coming and going between Europe and Chile loved and hated, but fled necessary especially in the '60s knows that the last, great, thwarted love of her life, a love of jazz musician in Geneva from the soul of restless stranger. Gilbert Favre at the beginning is completely subdued and conquered by the fire of this extraordinary woman who is 13 years older than him and gave up the clarinet and the disks of Bebop and devoted himself body and soul to quena, the traditional Andean flute, follows in all wanderings, accompanies each project beautiful and crazy, then - perhaps too much to chew up energy - is beginning to eclipse, to cut himself and then party away.

On the wagon of oblivion
before dawn
from one station of the time
decided to wander
Run-Run's gone to the North
perhaps never to return.
He'll be back for birthday
of our solitude. (...)
He took the paper and ink
perhaps a memory, who knows
without pain or joy
without pity or glory
without anger or bitterness
Rodless or freedom.
Empty as the grave
where is the humanity.
Run-Run to the north it's gone
I'll stay to the south
In between is a chasm
without music or light.
Ah, ah, ah, ah.

Gilbert Favre and Violeta Parra

Pain is in addition to pain, pain not to forget: a grim predestination seems to hover on Chile (Santiago is languishing, writes in an incredibly prophetic song), where Violeta has returned for the last time in '65, inaugurating a new big area - today it seems media - on the outskirts of the capital La reina de la carp in which she plays, painting, sculpting, cooking ... but the public seems not to notice. Do you feel old, alone and supplanted by a whole generation of singers (including her children who excel) born of what she has sown. Only those who have sown afraid of death, she once said. Violeta is not afraid of anything, and so crosses the edge of suicide, but just before delivery to the secular world the most beautiful prayer, the most extraordinary existence that hymn ever written, the song played and most famous of the Hispanic world. Violeta away, I wonder if you'll enjoy knowing ...

Thanks to life which has given me so much,
gave me two eyes that when I open them
perfectly distinguish black from white
and the high heaven its starry background
I love the man in the crowd.
 
Thanks to life which has given me so much,
has given me so much listening to open
I hear night and day crickets and canaries
Hammers, turbines, barks, storms
and the tender voice of who I'm loving.
 
Thanks to life which has given me so much,
gave me the voice and the ABC
and then the words I think and declare,
mother, friend, brother, light of,
the way the soul of who I'm loving.
 
Thanks to life which has given me so much,
gave me the path of my tired feet
I went with them to cities and puddles,
beaches and deserts, mountains and plains
and your house, your street, your backyard.
 
Thanks to life which has given me so much,
It gave my heart that shakes the boundaries
when I look at the fruit of the human brain,
when I look so good from evil,
when I look at the bottom of your eyes clear.
 
Thanks to life which has given me so much,
It gave the rice and gave me crying,
thus distinguish pleasure and pain
the two materials that make up my hand
and the singing of others that is the same song
and singing of all that is my own song.

Alessio Lega
alessio.lega@fastwebnet.it
 Translation by Enrico Massetti ("The other Fabrizio")