10/05/2026
Composer of the Week: Violeta Parra (1917 - 1967)
Violeta Parra is a Chilean composer, folklorist, and visual artist who gave Latin America one of its most enduring musical voices.
Born on October 4th, 1917, in San Carlos, Chile, into a large family, Parra's father was a music teacher who taught all of his children to sing and play instruments. She began writing songs from an early age, and quietly taught herself guitar as a young child. She worked in the tradition of Chilean folk music and Nueva Canción Chilena, a movement she helped found that used music as a vehicle for social justice.
In 1952, encouraged by her brother, the poet Nicanor Parra, she traveled throughout Chile to record its breadth of folk music, and that experience inspired her to begin melding Chilean folk traditions with her growing concern for social conditions.
She ultimately compiled more than three thousand songs, publishing them in the album ‘Cantos Folklóricos Chilenos’. She also became the first Latin American artist to hold a solo exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts at the Louvre in Paris.
Her most celebrated song, ‘Gracias a la Vida’, written in 1966, has been recorded by Joan Baez, Mercedes Sosa, and artists across the globe, and stands as one of the most profound folk songs ever written.
Violeta Parra was a composer, painter, sculptor, poet, and keeper of her people's traditions. She reminded the world that the music of ordinary people is anything but ordinary.
What else can you learn about Violeta Parra this week?
