canto para una semilla

Image Courtesy of the Popular Music Archive at the University of Liverpool

BY BEA OLDING

Canto Para Una Semilla: Song For a Seed

In homage of Violetta Parra and ‘su personalidad creativa’. 

Ayer sembró la simiente Yesterday she sewed the seed

que hoy florece y fructifica.  that today flourishes and bears fruit.

Epílogo, Violetta Parra - Inti-Illimani

True to her own lyrics, Violetta Parra, a prolific artist of 1960s Chile, planted the seed of the political, social, and musical movement Nueva Canción, nourishing it until her passing in 1967. This album, Canto Para Una Semilla, is a homage to her life, to ‘su personalidad creativa’, her creative personality. Produced four years after her death, composer Luis Advis took inspiration from her poetry collection Décimas – or Stanzas, in English. All the lyrics from the album are taken and rearranged from Décimas.

Nueva Canción was a musical movement that swept across Latin America in the 1960s and ‘70s. Driven by the political impetus for social justice in countries that were experiencing great poverty and inequality, this powerfully political folk music was developed with indigenous instruments from across the continent. Whilst the guitar - so imperative to Latin American folk music- remained central, the use of Andean instruments was also popular, such as the charango, belonging to the lute family, the quena, a flute made from wood or bone, and the zampoña, panpipes. 

Born to a poor family and surrounded by music, Violetta Parra took up the baton for change and popularised her concern for social conditions within Chile with her wide knowledge of Chilean folk music. Her most famous song, Gracias a La Vida, is still played often today. Although it was Parra’s musical talent that pioneered Nueva Canción, other musicians around her quickly joined and shaped the future of the movement. The two artists who interpreted Parra’s work on this album (her daughter Isabel Parra and the student-formed band Inti-Illimani) are two of just many who continued to promote and shape Nueva Canción beyond Parra’s early death at the age of 49. From 1973, the year that General Augusto Pinochet led the armed forces to overthrow the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, both the artists and music of the Nueva Canción movement, as well as the Andean instruments they played, were forbidden by the regime.

Me amarga la situación I am bitter about the situation
cómo cambiarla pudiera. how i could change it.
Pero ordenaré el problema But I will order the problem
al ritmo de una canción. to the rhythm of a song.

La Esperanza, Violeta Parra - Inti Illimani

The art we see here - the vibrant colours, the depiction of the sun and the bird - is indicative of the Latin American folk art that coloured a dark time in Chile. In a time of great suffering and need for faith, it was the art that connected and reconnected loved ones across the long, thin stretch of land that is Chile. This style, full of wonder and magic, was one that I came across time and time again as part of the project;  on cassette covers, vinyl sleeves, lyric books, and protest posters. I soon recognised this style to signify unity and the strength found in hope. I hope you, the reader, recognise it across our exhibition and experience the same.   

On this record cover, we see Violeta Parra who is seen above the clouds in the sky, the sun shining on her face as she continues to sing and play the guitar beyond the planes of life. Her life, full of both ambition and sadness, reflects those same themes we are exploring at Thinking Inside the Box:1973 - those of ‘conflicto y aspiraciones’, of hope and struggle. While those who drive social change become the symbols of hope and of determination, we must remember that the anguish they carry to fulfil this work is deep. By remembering them, through their words, their music, their lives, we can do just this; we can thank them for what they have done and find the courage to uphold the change they fought for.

Ya no tendrá sus dolencias She will no longer have her ailments
porque se fue de este mundo because she left this world
sumergida en el profundo submerged in the profound
misterio de las ausencias. mystery of absences.

Epílogo, Violetta Parra - Luis Advis