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<\/figure>\nEricka Verba\u2019s book Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra<\/em> is the riveting culmination of a lifetime of dedicated and passionate research about the world-renowned Chilean artist Violeta Parra. Verba immerses readers into the rowdy Chilean pe\u00f1as<\/em>, elite Communist gatherings, smoke-filled Parisian nightclubs, and desolate circus tents to narrate decades of Chilean musical history through Parra\u2019s life. Thanks to Life<\/em>, a long-anticipatedbook for historians of Chilean music, reveals the tumultuous realities of Chilean women musicians through Violeta\u2019s work and life.<\/p>\n Violeta Parra is considered the \u201cmother of Chilean protest music,\u201d who Verba positions as a multidimensional \u201ceverything-ist\u201d skilled in songwriting, poetry, ceramics, and a range of visual arts. All but disregarded in Chile during her lifetime, Verba attributes Parra\u2019s obscurity to gendered, racist and classist reasons. Verba frames such social characteristics around authenticity: Parra continually reinvented herself as \u201cthe representative of pure and unchanging traditions in the face of [modernity]\u201d (p. 301). While authenticity is a concept that has been discussed almost ad nauseum <\/em>in Folklore studies and Ethnomusicology, Verba masterfully revives the notion to demonstrate how Violeta manipulated this authenticity for her professional benefit. Parra deployed authenticity interchangeably as the Indigenous, the popular<\/em> (of the people), the intuitive, or the ordinary, even as audiences and stakeholders stereotyped and at times denigrated her for the same reasons. Verba underscores the intersecting gendered and classist facets of such claims: Parra\u2019s creative abilities, dress, and even her smell, both constructed\u00a0her as authentic and marginalized\u00a0her amongst\u00a0urban audiences.<\/p>\n What I find most exhilarating about Thanks to Life <\/em>is that Verba displays the complexity of Violeta for who she was, without attempts to either glorify or demonize her. Parra was notorious for her violent outbursts and brash personality; Verba reminds readers that had Violeta lived today, she would have likely been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Rather than attempting to explain Parra\u2019s choices\u2014her bawdy humor, toxic relationship with Gilbert Favre, or penchant for bashing guitars over others\u2019 heads\u2014she instead interrogates the gendered reactions to such behaviors. Methodologically, Verba pulls together primary sources from across the Americas and Europe by following the places where Parra travelled throughout her life. Through bringing in resources from unexpected places such as the American Folklife Center and the World Festival of Youth and Students Collection, she positions Parra\u2019s story within broader currents of twentieth century folk movements and the cultural Cold War. While I have to admit that I hoped for oral histories rather than a heavy reliance on secondary sources, Verba selected poignant interpersonal and anecdotal details from the autobiographies of individuals such as Favre and Violeta\u2019s brother, Nicanor, to bring Violeta\u2019s story to life. Verba further incorporates song and poetry lyrics into each chapter to explain Parra\u2019s political positions and supplement biographical information. The translations for such verses are particularly impressive as the poetry is riddled with colloquial phrases and Chilean-specific terminology. Collaborators Nancy Morris and Patricia Vilches did a stunning job translating while retaining meaning.<\/p>\n Thanks to Life <\/em>is chronologically organized into ten chapters, with patterning reminiscent of the ten-line poet-songs that Parra composed. Chapter 1, \u201cMaterials,\u201d explores Violeta\u2019s childhood and adolescence in southern Chile, framed as the years that gave her the \u201c\u2018materials that ma[d]e up [her] song\u2019\u201d (p. 11). Chapter 2, \u201cAnti-Materials,\u201d and Chapter 3, \u201cFolklorista,\u201d offer significant contributions to Chilean music history scholarship. In \u201cAnti-Materials,\u201d Verba reveals two decades of Parra\u2019s life that current narratives, and Violeta herself, glossed over: her years making ends meet as a young working-class musician in Santiago. Years of gigging in nighttime dives disrupt Parra\u2019s neat narrative of authenticity as a countryside child growing up to play folk music; yet, they explain how Parra gained the resiliency to maneuver within the male-dominated music industry in future years. \u201cFolklorista\u201d demonstrates the impact of her family, and particularly her siblings, on her initial success as a folklorista <\/em>and her subsequent rise as a forerunner of the folk music revival. Her brother Nicanor was particularly influential in both introducing her to the intellectual and artistic circles of Santiago and inspiring her to begin composing the traditionally masculine poet-songs. Conversely, the breakup of the commercially oriented sister duo Las Hermanas Parra forced Violeta to strike out on her own career, leading her to the folk songs that would initially bring her individual fame.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/notevenpast.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/service-pnp-yan-1a35000-1a35700-1a35719r.jpg\")
Source: Library of Congress<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n