Cuba Headlines

Cuba News, Breaking News, Articles and Daily Information

Silvio Rodriguez: lucidity has enemies
It will be four decades next July of the First Encounter of the Protest Song which hosted Casa de las Americas, between July 24 and August 8, 1967 the same year in which Silvio Rodriguez shared a recital with Teresita Fernandez and young poets and they took over television once a week with Mientras tanto... (Meanwhile...), a TV show where he appeared as star and presenter. Of that historical event, the author of Ojala and Te doy una canción remembered in an interview:

"Its obvious we were labeled as 'protesters' for appearing called by the Protest Song Center of Casa de las Americas" of course thanks to Haydée Santamaría. Actually at the time our songs considered "protest" shift more or less in the themes people knew about: the Viet Nam war, racial discrimination and ant-imperialism. But we never liked the term protest singers because it was very narrow, because it didn't reflect, in a wide and deeper sense what we wanted, what we attempted and of course, what we thought we were doing. And this was not other thing than following the Cuban troubadouresque tradition in its shapes and contents. We thought the term was snub, even coarse, because we also felt a strong commitment to the trova, with the freedom of poetry and the beauty and it seemed to us that it could not be tagged.

"On the other hand, Casa de las Americas, it was for some time the only place where we could expose the initial fires. We had there what youth needs: understanding and respect, to be looked over and supported. But we never use the term of protest singers to self-define ourselves."

After 40 years of that opening encounter " recently remembered with another international dedicated to the Necessary Song during Cubadisco 2007", Juventud Rebelde published a series of articles that had Nueva Trova as main theme and thought timely to talk to Silvio who, next to Pablo Milanes and Noel Nicola, are the top representatives of a manifestation which is key component of our identity.

Now, Silvio brings to the present the beginnings that preceded the moment in which the Nueva Trova entered the popular taste, even vying with the preference of dancing music: "the number of followers we had was little. The variety of personal recorders nowadays was non-existing then. Cassettes were not even invented. EGREM was the only in Cuba where disks were recorded and such joy reached us many years later. So during the first times the only way of listening the Nueva Trova was live.

"The followers of our music attended Casa de las Americas, the benches of parks, the vestibules, stairways of buildings and peoples homes. Constantly singing we arrived to schools and workplaces. The University of Havana, specifically the School of Letters, welcomed us several times and occasionally the university television which at the beginning only broadcasted for the surroundings of CUJAE, when Chomi Villar founded it."

Nevertheless, thinks Silvio, no matter how difficult it seems today, I think that todays youths have more facilities to follow their artists than back then.

"When we appeared there was some fatigue in the traditional ways of performing our music in a sector of the youth. As its happening now, that was discussed on newspapers; professionals and citizens were asked about a presumed crisis in the Cuban music. But those were different times from today. There was an extreme mistrust not only to rock but also to what was foreign, even with what smelled of "modern"; it was distrusted of what could be a bad influence for the youths.

"For that reason in the second half of the 60s in Cuba some composers were frankly dedicated to the invention of rhythms and everyday appeared a new group sporting a different 'discovery'. Some of those cadences were varying of traditional rhythms, like mozambique; others like the Wa-Wa, sought a decaffeinated assimilation of what was coming from "abroad". The television and radio fervently supported those launchings and some rhythm like the mozambique, not only move neighborhood people for a while but it was rather sent to Paris in conquering plan.

"Silvio, do you believe the trova impacts in today's youths?

"I dont know until what extent, but I also ignore how much means nothing either. I don't think the trova should have an incidence out-and-out. Trova itself has great variety and each area has its own addicts. Its remarkable that in spite of having almost always been an excluded music, they have survived until our days, sometimes thanks to small ghettos of admirers.

"I don't agree with attributing the absence or presence of trova, or any other music type, social problems that surely have other reasons. Of course I also think we had better moments for songs with good lyrics in our country.

"Id say lucidity has enemies. They usually attribute excess of responsibility to the social commitment in arts. They speak of too much conscience and with it sadness.

"These are absurd arguments to me, because we will all have enough absence of thinking when we are gone. Why anticipating the nothingness? What is the rush in not reflecting"?.

"In your opinion, what could be done?

"The young that still dwells within me can answer that: the cultural revolution that began with the literacy campaign and later it stopped. But I doubt this is a more appropriate moment than then. So while conditions are created for that lap, I suppose we should perfect our media and also put them in function of culture.

"This can not be a facade, because it has already been done. Those exposing culture must be the learned ones, those who make art must be artists. Several institutions should suffer a deep change."

"Is the trova living a good moment?

"The trova is only an expression of Cuban music and in itself it contains a wide variety. We must realize that, except in the times when the radio was invented, the trova has never been very popular in this media. The beginning of broadcasting launched Matamoros, Maria Teresa, Piñeiro. After that, in the times of feeling, the big Cuban troubadours sang under the shade of night clubs, while the famous interpreters spread around their works.

"The other moment of troubadouresque diffusion was when the Nueva Trova Movement was founded. Rather than being sponsored by the Young Communist League, although for that same reason, it seems to me that part of that success was because we were united, that regularly dozens of troubadours got together to speak about the problems of culture that it was a way of debating the countrys problems. Almost unnoticed we became a living factor of society. I believe that being so many and coherent reached the scope we had never imagined.


In interview published in 1980, Silvio told:

"I began to write songs which were later characterized with the name of Nueva Trova or New Song. Back then when I was asked what I was, I always preferred to call myself a troubadour. I don't know if for intuition. In that moment, I didn't have a clear idea of the historical development of trova neither of the meaning of everything we began to do. I was in the army, I had another work "comic designer"and I planned to return to my profession when I finished the military service.

"I began like this, as a youth who liked music, grabbed a guitar and began playing it. As all the youths of my time, it felt some rejection for the Cuban traditional music that was radioed. It was not like that with the traditional songs of trova that I had listened from my mother.

"In that time I used to think that troubadours were a group of old men who got together to sing with off-tune and grave voices. There was not either a popularization or rescue of our musical history.

"Since I took the guitar, I made it with the idea of saying my own things. I always had the certainty that my own things to say. Now, after a professional work of years, of having learned some music, of being able to analyze with more elements and rigor some issues, I realize that my songs always had a different intention to what it was heard in that moment. Although they were love songs, I always outlined the things in a different way. In that time, I began to read the classic of romanticism: Lord Byron, Becquer, Hoffman, all of them. Then I was delighted with Poes work. And today I am still a follower of some of his teachings."

Source: By: Agnerys Rodriguez Gavilan and Jose Luis Estrada Betancourt, CubaSi

Related News