Preguntitas sobre dios violeta parra biography

By 1953, Violeta Parra had been playing music in Chile for more than 20 years. But at 35 years old, she began a mission that would change music in her country and beyond: to collect and preserve the country’s traditional folk music.

Coming in contact with that musical heritage changed Violeta, and she would go on to compose song anthems like “Gracias a la vida,” which have touched people across the world. But life was not easy for Violeta — her life was marked by illness and loss.

In the latest episode of our Genias in Music series — about the lives and work of notable women musicians — we dive into the complexities of Violeta Parra, a pioneer of political folk music in Latin America.

Violeta was born in 1917 in a small village south of Santiago, the capital of Chile.

She was the third of nine siblings — her father was a schoolteacher and her mother a seamstress. Behind her parents’ back, Violeta picked up the guitar and taught herself how to play when sh