“I have a deep admiration for her—not every country has a Violeta Parra. We’ve been lucky enough to experience something really special in Chile. What she does encompasses so many facets, perspectives and dimensions.” (Daniel Emden, October, 2011)
Color Violeta is a musical group based around the realization of arrangements of compositions by the Chilean folk musician Violeta Parra (1917-1967). The group rediscovers and interprets songs that describe the traditions, scenery and human relations of Chile and Latin America.
Color Violeta is composed of Daniel Emden as director and arranger, percussion, guitar and piano; vocalist Pedro Díaz; Willy Ríos on charango and sicus (Andean panflute); Hugo Larenas on guitar and Sébastien Pellerin on double bass.
Color Violeta’s performances reveal the essence of Latin American traditional folk music, where rhythms such as the cueca, festejo, candombe, huayno and chacarera are fused intelligently and subtly with jazz. In this way, the group succeeds in creating a musical offering that is modern and original, yet respectful of its roots.
Violeta Parra
THE HISTORY OF COLOR VIOLETA
Color Violeta was born in the year 2009, fruit of Daniel Emden’s inspiration to recreate Latin American folk music.
In 2010, Daniel was awarded the Vivacité grant, presented by the Quebec Council of Arts and Letters, which allowed him to develop and record the group’s first EP with sound engineer Paul Johnston. This work was released on September 16 of the same year during a performance as part of the Bicentenary of Chile’s Independence.
From that day on, Color Violeta has continued to perform publically, delving into musical exploration with other musicians, such as Irem Bekter and Alejandro Venegas (of the group Intakto), both of whom have supported the labour of cultural revival being carried out by the group.
The group has been nominated two times, 2011 and 2015, for the Diversity Prize, awarded by the Montreal Council for the Arts together with CBC Radio and others. Following this they realized their first tour of Chile, invited by Ángel Parra Orrego, Violeta Parra’s grandson, with whom they shared the stage in their performances in Santiago.
Violeta Parra has been a great inspiration for him, due to the fact that they share, as artists, the same objective: to make their culture and roots known on the international stage.
His principal mission as a professional musician is to internationalize South American folklore, fusing it with styles from other countries. This was the main reason he decided to leave that continent and settle in the Northern Hemisphere.
"Let's imagine an image of a flower on a desertic and isolated background, with a lot of light. Now, let's put the same flower, but in the middle of a forest full of trees. That's what we do, we change the background and the color of the melodies.” (Daniel Emden, October, 2011)