Silvio Rodríguez

Name: Silvio Rodríguez – Al final de este viaje...
Item: Al final de este viaje...
Author: Federico Romagnoli

Al final de este viaje…

1978 (Areito)

nueva trova

by Federico Romagnoli

Silvio Rodríguez is the most important singer-songwriter in the history of Cuban music, capable of producing albums of great cultural significance for at least twenty years – from 1975 to the mid-Nineties – and later maintaining a still-dignified profile, with occasional resurgences thanks to the help of artists who had meanwhile grown up on his work: consider the duet with the Calle 13, "Ojos color del sol", from 2014.

There aren't many artists in the world who, almost single-handedly, can be said to define an entire artistic movement, but that's the case with Rodríguez and nueva trova Cuban music. The only other name that can compete in terms of impact is Pablo Milanés, whose body of work, on the whole, is nonetheless less imposing.

Rodríguez is also a symbol of how a creative mind can decode a complex and contradictory context, giving rise to a figure of many lights and a few shadows (mostly due to his uncritical stance toward post-revolutionary Cuba), whose songs several generations of artists have drawn from, from the singer-songwriters of his own generation to indie rock bands of the new millennium such as Chile's Bunkers, who dedicated an entire covers album to him ("Música libre", 2010).

For those unfamiliar with his story, we're talking about one of the best-known faces of Castro's Cuba Castro-era, on an international level. Celebrated by critics not only in Spanish-speaking countries but also in Italy, where he won the Premio Tenco in 1985, Rodríguez was a committed revolutionary from a young age and never turned his back on Castro's regime, indeed becoming one of its leading figures both artistically and as a propaganda asset.

La nueva trova was essentially born when Rodríguez, together with a group of friends including Milanés himself, was recruited by the woman who held the reins of culture in post-revolutionary Cuba: Haydée Santamaría.

They were among the most turbulent of the young singers then emerging: Rodríguez had even managed to get on television, only to be thrown off for talking about Beatleswhich, at the time, were viewed negatively by the regime. Milanés had even spent a year in a concentration camp because his artistic temperament was considered difficult to manage.

Santamaría had the winning intuition: to bring them together in an institute that would give them a voice, resources and financial support, so they could be used as a bridge between the regime and young people (the first generation of revolutionaries was, after all, starting to turn forty). Where communist Russia feared its singer-songwriters, Cuba turned them into a megaphone.

Full integration took some time, but by the mid-1960s it was essentially complete. In 1975 Rodríguez released his first, epoch-making solo album, "Días y flores", which immediately made an impact in Cuba and was exported that same year to Peru, Spain and Chile (where it was partly censored by Augusto Pinochet's regime). It arrived in Argentina considerably later, in 1982, by which point the dictatorship was already crumbling.

It's worth noting just how much right-wing regimes feared his songs and the way they smuggled in socialist ideals through delicate, imaginative, poetic verses. In a Latin America that, Cuba aside, was at the time being swept by anti-communist regimes backed by American intelligence services, Rodríguez risked giving voice back to those who had been eliminated — not just from the media, but physically — by their respective regimes, such as the Chilean Víctor Jara or Argentina's Jorge Cafrune (for the sake of historical accuracy, it should be noted that there's no definitive proof regarding the latter, but public opinion in Argentina is almost unanimous on the matter). And so, while the nueva canción at a continental level was being suffocated, the nueva trova Cuban one was thriving.

Besides being a skilled political commentator, Rodríguez is also a poet, and as such capable of describing everyday life, feelings, the passing of time, the human condition in its most universal sense. His second album, “Al final de este viaje…”, released in 1978 and hailed triumphantly across the Spanish-speaking world, is likewise built around these themes. To this day it remains the record with which the public most identifies the artist, perhaps his starkest and, at the same time, his most majestic.

Stark because it was recorded with only guitar accompaniment, majestic for the breadth of themes it tackles and for its flawless technical execution.

The ten tracks on the record were all written between 1968 and 1970, when the author was still a novice and the Cuban institutions had only just begun to absorb him: seven of them, having found no earlier outlet, are recorded here for the first time, while three – already released as part of EPs and anthologies – are nonetheless re-recorded from scratch, so that style and sound would be consistent with the rest.

The programmatic opener is “Canción del elegido”, dedicated to the Cuban revolutionary Abel Santamaría Cuadrado (killed by Fulgencio Batista's government forces in 1953): from the title alone he is likened to the figure of the chosen one, the singular yet plural messiah celebrated in the atheist liturgy of the revolution. “Every time a story is created, it speaks of an old man, a child or oneself. But my story is a difficult one: I won't tell you about an ordinary man. I will tell the story of a being from another world, a galactic animal. It's a story that has to do with the course of the Milky Way. It's a buried story, it speaks of a being that came from nothing”.

As an epic, and in the most literal sense of the term, it celebrates the sanctity of the warrior's cause (or the guerrilla fighter's, as the case may be), the baleful wrath of the hero who hurls himself fearlessly against the enemy, be it the most immediate and material one or the more abstract, universal one of oppression, of man's exploitation of man. “He understood history in an instant. He felt the shattered glass upon his head and understood that war was the peace of the future: the most terrible things are learned at once, and beauty costs us our life. The last time I saw him he was walking through smoke and shrapnel, happy and naked. He was killing scoundrels with his cannon of the future”.

With “La familia, la propiedad privada y el amor” the social critique shifts to the role and prospects of women, subjugated – economically, psychologically and sexually – by the capitalist, post-colonial and Catholic system of domination: “And when you stop loving, remember the children. Don't leave your husband or a nice house. You had white ribbons on your skin, you already had a fixed price from before, you were worth four fists of the law, you sitting on fear, on the fear of running away”.

An image of the Vietnam War also appears, though without stealing the scene from the feminine ideal that Rodríguez is trying to shake awake: “What would God say, if you love without the church and without the law? God to whom you have already given yourself in communion, God who makes children's souls eternal, children who will be destroyed by bombs and napalm”.

“Ojalá” is the best-known song of his career. Its glimpses of mutually contrasting images have sparked long debates over the meaning of the lyrics, including political readings that see in it now an invective against Pinochet, now an improbable, spiteful panegyric to Castro. According to the author, it is in fact a mournful love song in which the protagonist struggles amid searing contradictions: indeed, the political content mentioned above is perhaps best attributed to the imagination of the artist's most fervent admirers, who seem unable to let go of his political commitment.

May the leaves not touch your body as they fall,

so that you cannot turn them into glass.

May the rain cease to be a miracle flowing down your body,

may the moon rise without you,

may the earth not kiss your footsteps.

May your constant gaze be exhausted,

the exact word, the perfect smile.

May something happen to erase you suddenly:

a blinding light, a burst of snow.

May death at least take you away from me,

so I won't see you so much, so I won't see you always,

in every second, in every vision.

May I not even touch you/play you in a song.

May dawn not cast cries that fall upon my shoulder,

may your name be forgotten by that voice,

may the walls not hold on to the sound of your weary footsteps,

may desire follow you out,

to your old realm of the dead and of flowers.

(Note – 1: the word “ojalá” could also be translated as “maybe”, “let's hope”, “God willing”. This last meaning is closest to the word's etymology – from Andalusian Arabic, “Law sha'a Allah”: “may God be pleased” – and particularly to the imploring character of the lyrics. The imperative expression “may” was chosen in order to simplify the flow of the sentence;

2: besides “to touch”, “tocar” is also used to mean “to play [an instrument]”, hence the deliberate ambivalence of the phrase)

Dedicated to Ernesto Guevara, “La era está pariendo un corazón” does not trace, this time, the archetypal image of the hero and his deeds, but rather the motivations and the urgency of acting upon the world to change the course of history: “L’era sta dando alla luce un cuore. He can't take it anymore, he dies of grief. E occorre andare in suo aiuto in fretta, perché sta svenendo l’avvenire. […] Devo lasciare la casa e il divano. The mother lives until the sun dies. And you have to burn the sky if necessary, to live, for any man in the world, for any home.”

“Resumen de noticias” is a kind of open letter, a public confession, but also a denunciation of the traits — more than the people — that the author considers negative: “I was within everyone's reach, because it costs nothing to look inside yourself. I was within reach of every hand that wanted to touch my hand, my friend, but poor me, I wasn't with the prisoners of his well-off mind. I wasn't with those who laugh with only half a laugh, the delimiters of spring”.

The character, mildly self-deprecating and humorous, emerges from the almost bureaucratic phrasing of the lyrics, a literary device that is fairly common both in Rodríguez and in other Latin American songwriters: “If anyone listening should feel portrayed, know that it was done with that very intention. Any complaints, as long as they're not on letterhead, goodnight friends and enemies.”

In “Debo partirme en dos” the inner conflict of the young troubadour comes through: on one hand, the spokesman of his struggling era (“You see, now I'm decent, it was easy for me. Let the audience gather and hail me. Let the children come close and enjoy the rhythm. And let the intellectuals stay seated”), on the other, a man with his private life and his own needs, willingly a bit pathetic (“I love you, my love, don't leave me alone. I can't be without you, look, I'm about to cry”).

“Óleo de mujer con sombrero” (“Oil Painting of a Woman with a Hat”) is the best-known song from the tetralogy “Exposición de mujer con sombrero” (“Exhibition of a Woman with a Hat”). The other three are: “Dibujo de mujer con sombrero” (“Drawing of…”), “Detalle de mujer con sombrero” (“Detail of…”) and “Mujer sin sombrero” (“Woman without a Hat”). The complete tetralogy, written between the late Sixties and early Seventies, first appeared in full on the album “Amoríos” (2015), with “Óleo…” being the only one published up to that point.

Although the author sometimes applies the metaphorical figure of a woman to that of revolution, in this case he seems to be referring to an actual woman, probably a relationship from his youth. The lyrics contain a reference to the Russian painter Marc Chagall, a source of inspiration for Rodríguez's parallel career as an illustrator.

A woman has lost herself,

of knowing delirium and dust,

she has missed out on this beautiful madness,

her short hips beneath me,

my way of loving got lost

my mark got lost in her sea.

I see a flickering light

and it promises to leave us in the dark,

I see a dog barking at the moon

with another figure that seems to remember me.

I see more: I see that she hasn't found me.

I see more: I see that she got lost.

An unnameable woman,

runs off like a seagull,

and I quickly dry my boots,

curse a note and turn off the clock.

But who cares about love,

if I can recite her song to her.

Cowardice is a matter for men,

but not for lovers.

Cowardly loves never become loves,

nor stories, they stop right there,

not even memory can save them,

nor the finest orator conjugate them.

A woman with a hat

like a painting by old Chagall,

corrupting herself at the center of fear.

And I, who am no good person, started crying,

but back then I cried for myself,

and now I cry to see her die.

(Note – The ambivalence of the woman who “si è persa” recurs: officially it is meant as “she missed the chance to…”, yet without giving up the underlying sense of “she lost herself”)

“Al final de este viaje…” cannot, however, be reduced to a great collection of verses. Rodríguez is also an excellent guitarist and composer, essentially self-taught, though he honed his skills during the years spent in the Grupo de Experimentación Sonora of the ICAIC (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry), before launching his solo career.

We thus find elusive harmonies that waver between major and minor (“Ojalá”, “Debo partirme en dos”), labyrinthine chord progressions (“Aunque no esté de moda” would deserve an article of its own), chromaticism and diminished triads (the title track). The influences range from European and American singer-songwriter traditions to bolero, passing through classical music, absorbed both via Cuban tradition (the old bolero were influenced by Italian opera as well as by German lieder ), and later on their own, through listening to the great Baroque, Classical and Romantic composers. These lineages surface in the complex arpeggios scattered throughout the record.

The production, too, is top-notch: the album was recorded in Madrid at the Sonoland studio, opened in 1975 and among the best in Europe. Backed by producer Pedro Orlando, who would later vanish without trace, and sound engineer José Antonio Álvarez Alija, one of the most sought-after names in the history of Spanish pop, Rodríguez recorded ten flawless tracks, in which the voice is often aided by a masterful use of echo (without ever producing an overly sibilant sound).

Even the vibrations of the guitar strings come across as perfectly calibrated: compare this version of “Ojalá” with the one released a year earlier on “Cuando digo futuro” (a collection of material recorded between 1968 and 1973), where the instrument at times seemed to overwhelm the vocal line.

Taken as a whole, the album is a marvel of poetry, technical skill and compositional genius that the singer-songwriter tradition has rarely managed to achieve, at least with such sparse means.

Rodríguez would go on to enrich his songbook with many other classics, but perhaps without ever again crafting a work quite so essential, a manifesto of Ibero-American culture from the first song to the last.

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27/12/2020

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition