Lalo Parra Gravely Ill

Eduardo "Lalo" Parra the 90 years-old musician is gravelly ill, his family reports. Lalo Parra, better known as Tío Lalo, or Uncle Lalo, is in a Santiago Hospital connected to a ventilator to ease his illness. Doctors say Parra has a severe urinary infection that is compromising internal organs. His Family says they will wait 72 hours to determine if he will be disconnected from the ventilator with the hope, Parra makes a recovery.


Lalo Parra Profile on TV 2 Years Ago

Parra belongs to Chile´s Royal family of folk music. He is a younger brother to the great folk musician and artist Violeta Parra, and to poet extraordinaire Nicanor Parra; who has been nominated for a Nobel Prize for Literature numerous times. Violeta who has had many of his songs covered the world over was also a plastic artist, who in the early 1960s held an exposition of her work at France's famed Louvre Museum.


Violeta Parra in a French TV documentary

Nicanor is one this country's greatest poets. He is known as the antipoet, because he developed the anti poetry style to break away from Pablo Neruda's poetry. Nicanor's verb incorporates prose, the turn of phrase and pounding of the urban sound into his lyric -some say his work inspired the Beat writers.


Nicanor Parra Documentary Part 1


Nicanor Parra Documentary Part 2

As a teenager, Lalo Parra arrived in Santiago with his brothers and sisters, from their native San Carlos, near the town of Chillan, some 500 Km south of Santiago. In Santiago, they performed folk music in restaurants, cabarets, clubs or anywhere they could get a music gig. Lalo Parra then went on to form a duo with brother Roberto. With Roberto they began to perform and record Chile's national dance and song the Cueca, mixing it with other sounds leading to a Chilean version of jazz/foxtrot.

That music style was rescued by a younger generation of musicians who returned Lalo Parra to the mainstream of Chilean rock pop music. Lalo Parra is also responsible for the resurgence in Cueca during the country's national festivities. But particularly the Cueca Brava, or urban rough and tumble Cueca.

The Parra family was large, nine brothers and sisters all artists who performed singing the music from the countryside, which they made known into the mainstream of Chilean culture and society. That work is owed to the seminal work of Violeta who travelled the countryside north and south capturing and composing the country's music. Lalo and Roberto's duo concentrated in bar music that eventually made it to the current rock and pop music.

Tio Lalo Parra retired from performing two years ago when a severe pneumonia kept him bed ridden, he caught it, when he was performing during National Day Festivities. Parra did make a promise to make it to Chile's Bicentennial in 2010.

For those of us who love music and popular culture deeply rooted in Chile's countryside, we hope Parra is able to make it and sip a cup of red wine or chicha -homemade sweet wine made from grapes or apple- on September 18, 2010.