Violeta Parra at the MEG

Versión en español

International Archives of Folk Music 

Provenance research on four magnetic tapes of Chilean folk music recordings done by Violeta Parra, given to the MEG in 1963

Coordination, writing, and research: Ileana Muñoz Rodriguez (Master of Musicology, University of Geneva)

Scientific advisor and research in Chile: Jorge Pacheco Escobar (Master of Ethnomusicology, University of Geneva / HEM / University of Neuchâtel)

Supervisor: Madeleine Leclair (Curator of the Ethnomusicology Department at the MEG)

English translation : Emma Lingwood

In the 1950s, Violeta Parra (1917-1967), a Chilean musician, singer, poet, and artist, embarked on an ambitious project to collect the diverse musical traditions of her country. Equipped with her recorder and endowed with a remarkable ability to put her interviewees at ease, Violeta gathered interviews and songs from a variety of regions, such as Araucanía (Mapuche territory), the Zona Central (Central Chile), and Tarapacá in the north. She documented diverse musical traditions, like the canto a lo poeta (song to the poet), which can be subdivided into canto a lo divino (song to the divine) and canto a lo humano (song to humanity), as well as cuecas and tonadas, amongst others.

In 1963, while living in Geneva with her partner, Swiss musician Gilbert Favre, she gave four magnetic tapes to the MEG (Musée d’ethnographie de Genève / Ethnography Museum Geneva). These contain about two hours of a careful selection of her recordings, featuring technical demonstrations (tuning techniques, rhythms, etc.) that she herself performed, along with some of her own compositions.

The research carried out within the MEG Collections aims to identify, document, and contextualize the archives in our conservation in order to valorise them and make them accessible to the public and researchers alike. In this context, the Department of Ethnomusicology has chosen to undertake a dual-facetted research project on a portion of the items within the International Archive of Folk Music (Archives internationales de musique populaire, AIMP): firstly, a provenance study focusing on the four magnetic tapes donated by Violeta Parra to the MEG; and secondly, the identification and description of the content of these tapes, which may now be consulted in their entirety at the MEG.

This work was made possible thanks to the collaboration of several specialists, both in Chile and Europe. The identification of the recordings was led by Ileana Muñoz Rodriguez and Jorge Pacheco Escobar in collaboration with researcher Paula Miranda (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile [Pontifical Catholic University of Chile]) and researcher Rodrigo Torres (Archivo Sonoro de Música Tradicional, ASMT, Universidad de Chile [University of Chile]). In terms of the provenance research, Ileana Muñoz Rodriguez made use of interviews with people who had met Violeta Parra in Geneva and called on the expert opinion of early recording specialist David Hadzis (United Music Foundation). The provenance research work also consisted of multiple visits to the Geneva City Archives and drew upon recent journalistic work on Violeta Parra’s time in Geneva by Jonathan Mardones and Eileen Hofer.