OBRAS DE VIOLETA PARRA

Los Jaivas have in "Alturas de Macchu Picchu" song "La Poderosa Muerte" my favorite track by them. However, despite how impressive that album might be, and how beautiful it's transposition into the ruins of Macchu Picchu is, "Obras de Violeta Parra" is just miles away in Prog-Folk superiority.

We get that idea from the first notes of the album: "Arauco Tiene Una Pena" starts just like "La Poderosa Muerte". Ah, but then you hear the piano keys pound just before the guitar enters the scene, and you know this will be much more than "Alturas...".

In fact, when comparing both, "more" is the expression that comes to mind. It's not just because the album is a double with half an hour more music. It has more epics, all of which more symphonic, more climatic, with greater shifts from rock to folk, and better done.

The "mariachi" bits that our own demanding prog-folk maniac Hugues Chantraine (I tip my hat in humble reverence) can't get past, in my view, only add to general briliance of the album, as they provide a great interlude between the symphonic bits, leaving wanting more and more without getting fed up in an album of this lenght. Trotsky gives a very good description of the main arrangements and effects in the songs, but while he praises the excelent drumming and piano, I have to praise the fantastic quality of the electric guitars, that in no way take a lot of protagonism in the album, but completlety steal the show during their brief apearences: be it by complementing the symphonic keyboarding or driving the folkier parts forward.

It's really hard to point highlights and draw comparissons when all is very good and unique. The whole 77 minutes just seem to pass while you are in this kind of numbness, and are transported into the dreamy-then-nightmare-then-sweet-dreaming-again experience that is listening to "Obras de Violeta Parra".

By the way, this small review took me almost two hours to write. All because I had the "brilliant" idea of putting the album on while writing, which made me loose my concentration every 5 seconds... When a music album playing in the background calls for so much of your atention, then you know it is REALLY good.