Rising Stars: Meet Ericka Verba of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ericka Verba

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I am the author of a biography of the remarkable Chilean musician and artist Violeta Parra ((1917–1967) titled Thanks to Life (available January 2025, U of North Carolina Press). Parra is an inspiration to generations of artists and activists across the globe. Her music is synonymous with resistance, and it animated both the Chilean folk revival and the protest music movement Nueva Cancion (New Song). Her renowned song “Gracias a la vida” has been covered countless times, including by Joan Baez, Mercedes Sosa, and Kacey Musgraves. A self-taught visual artist, Parra was the first Latin American to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in the Louvre. My book traces Parra’s radical life and multifaceted artistic trajectory across Latin America and Europe and on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

A biographer is always in relationship with their subject. In my case, my relationship with Violeta Parra goes back five decades. My interest in Violeta Parra began in my early teens in the 1970s when I became friends with a Chilean family of musicians and artists who taught me my first Violeta Parra songs and guided my political awakening to the brutality of the Pinochet dictatorship and the role of the US government in installing and supporting it. As a musician and founding member of the US-based New Song groups Sabiá and Desborde, I have been performing Parra’s music since 1976. In 1980, I wrote my undergraduate senior thesis on Parra’s autobiography in verse. In 1996, I was the musical director and arranger for a tribute concert to Violeta Parra, supported by an Artists in the Community grant from the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department and recorded and released as Desborde, Tribute Concert to Violeta Parra. As a professor of Latin American History since 2004, I have welded my research on the history of women in Chile with my interest in Parra to acquire a deeper understanding of the social context and gender dynamics that shaped Parra’s life. Suffice to say, my book represents the culmination of a decades-long curiosity about Violeta Parra and engagement with her work.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I think I have been incredibly consistent in my interest in Parra and my passion to make her life and work more well known. My road has had it’s share of bumps. The worst thing did not happen to me, but to my late husband César Torres. César was the bass player in two of the bands I performed with; Sabiá and Desborde. He died of lymphoma at age 43. When the doctors here in Los Angeles offered him hospice care he made the decision to return to his native Mexico to be with his family in his hometown of Colima. This may sound strange, but I brought a tape of Violeta Parra’s songs with me to Colima. By then, I knew that César was going to leave us and I knew that I needed to have a reason to live after he died. The tribute concert to Violeta Parra that I put together with the loving support of our family of musician friends in the years after his passing gave me purpose in my grief. The concert was a tribute to Parra, but for all of us who loved César, it was also a tribute to him. I know we all felt his loving spirit accompanying us every step of the way. In that way, his loss became associated with tremendous creativity and sense of community.

In terms of my book, Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra, the hardest part has been to carve out time to work on it. And my greatest gifts have been the support I’ve gotten from scholars, archivists, librarians, musicians, and my fellow “Violetamaniacs” along the way.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I serve as Director and Professor of Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. My research interests include the cultural Cold War, the role of music in social movements, and the intersection of gender and class politics in twentieth-century Latin America. I am honored to have received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright, and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. I am also proud to be a founding member of SCALAS (Southern California Association of Latin American Studies) and the recipient of the E. Bradford Burns Award for service to the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies.

What makes you happy?
Making music in community gives me great happiness. For the book launch of Thanks to Life: A Biography of Violeta Parra, I will be performing with friends who I have been singing with for over four decades. At our rehearsals, we laugh at how much lower our voices have become over the years, and we celebrate our friendship and all that we have been through together.. I feel very blessed to be so well accompanied on my life’s journey..

The book launch – concert will take place Saturday, January 25, 2025, from 7:00-9:00PM at the Church in Ocean Park, Church in Ocean Park, 235 Hill Street, Santa Monica.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://erickaverba.com/
• Instagram: Ericka Verba
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ericka.verba/

Image Credits
Personal photo (head shot with purple shirt) Photo by Victor Mojica