30 years of the embrace between Silvio Rodríguez and the end of the dictatorship in Chile

April 2, 2020

Just 20 days after democracy's return to Chile, the Cuban singer-songwriter reunited with Chile in a historic concert before 80,000 people at the Estadio Nacional.

For the first time, the author of 'Santiago de Chile' played the songs that managed to overcome the censorship blockade and spread through pirated cassettes and clandestine songbooks. After 17 years of military rule, Silvio Rodríguez and the Chilean people looked each other in the face and sang to freedom.

Nine o'clock and the lights of the Estadio Nacional go out, beginning an instrumental introduction of almost 10 minutes. Silvio Rodríguez did not come alone. Over two months of rehearsals went into this show, which had as its backbone the Cuban jazz band Irakere, led by the renowned pianist Chucho Valdés. He opens 'Concierto andino', the first song of the night and a tribute to the music of the south of the world in a jazz tone, foretelling a historic night.

Hands in his pockets and looking downward, Silvio Rodríguez enters shyly onto the stage of a stadium that cheered him with the same fervor with which it had awaited him since his last visit in 1972. There were many years of a dictatorship musicalized in the shadows with the verses of hope from this young 43-year-old Cuban singer-songwriter, and tonight they finally looked each other in the face. He barely dared to look, pulled out his hand and extended it high to greet and begin to mend this damaged bond. As he sits and adjusts his guitar, the public does not stop shouting and waving Chilean flags. In the background, Irakere begins 'Causas y azares'. Rodríguez strums his strings and looks nervously at the audience. He smiles and the public erupts in emotion. Silvio Rodríguez was back.

"Good evening, Santiago de Chile," were his first words. "Well, what can I tell you? I had thought so many things... I think I've never used... I think this will be the first time I use the name of my people to say something to another people, because speaking in the name of a people is too high a responsibility, but I think I run no risk in telling you, in the name of all Cuba, 'a great gesture of solidarity and Latin American brotherhood with the people of Chile' and heartfelt congratulations on democracy."

Ernesto Fernández

The night continued with classic hits and others he had composed during this eternal hiatus, which precisely summarizes the core of his discography. "So you know... there was so much lack of communication." Like a kind of reconciliation of this forced separation, Silvio Rodríguez was premiering for Chile the greatest milestones of his career to a country that sang everything, both at the Estadio Nacional and through the broadcast of Televisión Nacional de Chile. One after another they followed. 'Óleo de mujer con sombrero', 'Pequeña serenata diurna', 'Por quién merece amor', 'La maza', 'Ángel para un final', 'Unicornio' and a grateful etcetera. The deafening chorus of 'Ojalá', the emotional closing with 'Unicornio', the flushed smiles of its author or even the coda of 'Te conozco' (that music used in several endings of TVN telenovelas during the 90s) as the close of the show are part of the indelible postcards of this concert.

I Live in a Free Country

There were so many pending songs and the night was so short that Silvio Rodríguez shortened some of them like 'Pequeña serenata diurna' in order to deliver a set of more than 30 songs, especially in the solo blocks on guitar or as a duet with pianist Chucho Valdés. The recording of this concert was materialized in a double album he simply titled Silvio Rodríguez en Chile and also in a VHS with the same name that today is available on YouTube.

"I want to dedicate this concert from the deepest part of me to Víctor Jara" and he lets the public applaud for almost a minute to the creator of 'El derecho de vivir en paz', followed by the chant "and it fell, and it fell, and it fell, and it fell". The complicity between the public and the singer-songwriter is unique. Silvio Rodríguez, conscious of the situation in this country that was beginning to rise, is respectful in his references.

"I wrote this song thinking of a captain" and the lukewarm and first democratic boos against the dictator began to be heard; "...who marched with Che to Bolivia," he hurried to say before the Nacional came down. Then the boos transformed into ovation. After years of censorship, there was no room for misunderstandings.

Despite the great trajectory of the Irakere band and its leader Chucho Valdés, winner of 4 Grammys, the public preferred the intimate Silvio Rodríguez, that one with the wooden guitar who inspired numerous spontaneous and clandestine demonstrations during the recent dark years. "I am singing a few songs with the guitar, because I know that here the troubadour work was very well known. I thought you would also want a bit of guitar." The "yes" from 80,000 people was deafening. Still, the public danced to the rhythm of Cuban son in cuts like 'Canción en harapos' or 'Canción urgente para Nicaragua'.

Let Hope Come

As he noted in an interview prior to the concert, Silvio Rodríguez felt like a "kind of exile" and accumulated a carefully selected compilation of his songs, those that would summarize the series of messages that the singer-songwriter, consciously or not, sent to Chile breaking through the dictatorship's blockade from abroad.

Silvio Rodríguez had visited the country in 1972 in the context of a Cuban delegation arranged by then-president Salvador Allende and in which Pablo Milanés even came. Two days before his return in 1990, Silvio Rodríguez appears in the midst of a huge crowd of journalists and citizens who went to meet him at the airport. The singer-songwriter is received at the Palacio de La Moneda by president Patricio Aylwin and gives a press interview in which he analyzes the moment. "All I hope is that this concert serves so that the peoples of Chile and Cuba resume what — for reasons beyond our peoples — had been interrupted," he stated.

Silvio Rodríguez's message was not limited to just this concert. The Cuban also visited prisons and even confronted the press that questioned Fidel Castro's government, stating "in Cuba there are no political prisoners."

Silvio Rodríguez marked the return of a series of concerts by musicians censored and exiled by the dictatorship. A month later, on April 26, Joan Manuel Serrat will repeat the Cuban's feat at the same Estadio Nacional. In Silvio Rodríguez's concert, Isabel Parra also participated in 'Generaciones' and 'Sólo el amor' and dedicated a trio of songs especially to Chile: 'La resurrección', 'Santiago de Chile' and 'Venga la esperanza'.

"I think the integration of Latin America is a magnificent idea and if this concert serves for that, even just a little bit, I think whoever asks for more is being greedy."