3 - Conversation with Nicanor Parra about Violeta

Summary

The day on which we were supposed to record our conversation about Violeta, Nicanor welcomed me dressed in a long poncho. We went up to the second floor of his library. He asked me if I had any Araucanian music. He said he was very interested in it. Then he started to imitate the hollow sound of the trutruca and to dance the final part of an Araucanian song, turning and tapping the rhythm with his feet. He stretched his arms, lifting his poncho up, which gave the dancer the look of a ritual bird. Then he talked to me about the idea of a musical that should be like a ‘collage, a dissemination’, made only from the ends of songs, beginning with the national anthem. ‘Take the national anthem, for example, and make it end like a rumba, or a conga, or a waltz, or an opera. And they're all farewells, farewells, farewells. Never-ending.’ Immediately he took the idea of mixing the ends of songs in another direction. He remembered a song from Chiloé, a sirilla and he sang part of it, in a very good voice. ‘Look what happens now,’ he said. He hummed the fragment of the sirilla, but entwining it at the end with the fragment of the Araucarian song, always tapping the rhythm with his feet. The result was surprising: the two fragments seemed to have forgotten their differences, blending together and giving birth to an entirely new musical product. ‘Look how they move from one to the other, how naturally that happened! How they become deeper as they pass from the slightly picturesque Spanish feel to the earthy Araucanian feel.’ He ended saying: ‘Spain and America: integration’.

This introduction, obviously, was not far from the theme of our conversation. Nicanor was without doubt creating the atmosphere of an incantation. The name of Violeta had not yet been mentioned, but neither was it necessary: her memory had already been invoked.