Gracias a la vida

The story

"Gracias a la vida" was written, composed and first performed by the Chilean folk singer-songwriter Violeta Parra, one of the artists of the movement and musical genre known as the Nueva Canción Chilena. She composed it in La Paz, Bolivia, in 1966, and it was included on Las Últimas Composiciones, the last album she released before her death by suicide in 1967. It is one of her best-known songs and one of the most covered Latin American songs in history.

The song spread through other singers. Mercedes Sosa's version of 1971, on her album Homenaje a Violeta Parra, made it popular across the Spanish-speaking world. Joan Baez made it known in the United States in 1974 with an album of the same title and went on singing it in concert in many countries, and the Italian singer-songwriter Gabriella Ferri brought it to Italian listeners on her album Remedios the same year. Later versions came from the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča and the Cuban singer Omara Portuondo, from Cote de Pablo for the film The 33 (2015) and from Kacey Musgraves on Star-Crossed (2021).

The Chilean music journalist Marisol García has called it a "humanist hymn". In 2009 Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile, described it as a song both Chilean and universal and praised Mercedes Sosa's voice in it. It was inducted into the Latin Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013.

After the earthquake that struck Chile in 2010, Beto Cuevas, the former singer of La Ley, organised a charity recording by the supergroup Voces Unidas por Chile, produced by Humberto Gatica and released on 4 May 2010, with Shakira, Juanes, Juan Luis Guerra, Fernando Olvera, Alejandro Sanz, Miguel Bosé, Laura Pausini and Michael Bublé among others. Warner Music issued it worldwide, and the profits went to Habitat for Humanity for housing families in need, in Chile and elsewhere.

What it says

A song of gratitude for life and for what it gives. Its mood is quiet, reflective and tender.

The words

The words of this song are still in copyright, so they are not printed here. “What it says” above gives their theme in our own words, and the performance below lets you hear them.