Chilean singer, songwriter, folklorist, social activist, poet, and
visual artist Violeta Parra would have celebrated her 100th birthday
this year. In her new recording, El Gavilan, vocalist, songwriter and
producer Sofia Rei celebrates her legacy by approaching her music with
the imagination and daring that characterized Parra s work. Sofia
re-imagines Parra's music in a contemporary setting and records an album
in duo with eclectic and adventurous guitarist Marc Ribot and the
surprise participation of Angel Parra, Violeta's grandson. Sofia also
plays caja vidalera, a hand-held single head drum from Argentina's
northwest, and charango, a small, five double string guitar from the
Andean region of South America. It is still, in essence, the classic
folk voice-and-guitar arrangement, but framed by both, electronics and
traditional instruments. The results spacious and almost minimalist
illuminate Parra's work from unexpected angles. Sofia built most of the
song arrangements with only multilayered vocals sculptured as loops with
effects and a wide range of textures creating a sonic landscape unique
to each composition. El Gavilán is a thirteen-minute composition from
Parra, closer to atonal academic music than to Latin American folklore,
in which the pain and desperation of a devious love take flesh in a
dissonant sonority and lyrics that resemble babbling, as if nothing was
left to say other than what this disruptive and mourning music
expresses. El Gavilán is also the piece that inspired this project.
Violeta Parra's body of work is a heritage to which one always returns,
as her figure is the symbol of multiple artists: a woman, Latin
American, a revolutionary, a lover. Firm and sensitive, militant and
suffering, a compiler and a creator.
