Professor Ericka Verba, is the director of Latin American Studies at California State University. She's an author and a musician, recently reviewed as a rising star by the Los Angeles magazine voyage LA. She is notably the author of the first English language biography of Violeta Parra out now entitled Thanks to Life. The title translates Parra's iconic song, Gracias a la Vida, famously covered by Joan Baez and many more. Violeta Parra is one of Chile's most important women artists and Ericka's study of her life and work spans five decades. Her deep expertise translates into the reviews, describing it as a "stunning achievement" and "deeply moving." She both navigates and honors the life of a complex woman, an artist who shattered gender, racial and class barriers. Violeta Parra collected and preserved Chilean folk music as a personal mission, now of huge national significance and made an important contribution to Chile's protest music movement. New Song. Thanks to life, underscores the power of art as a force for change. Parra represented voices that were otherwise unheard in her songs, notably women workers and indigenous peoples. She broke extraordinary barriers as a recording and visual artist working across paintings, ceramics and tapestries. In 1964 she became the first self taught Latin American visual artist to hold a solo exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts, housed in the Louvre, Paris, tragically in 1967 and this biography documents her travels throughout Latin America and Europe at the height of the Cold War. It's intertwined with her conflicting identities and the meaning of authenticity. This biography is a legacy work of passion and compassion.

Discover Ericka Verba https://erickaverba.com/

Series Audio Editor - Joey Quan.

Series Music - Courtesy of Barry J. Gibb

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