Silvio, the indispensable one, turns 75

November 29, 2021

Blessed be the time that gave me
a song without permission.
Blessed be the paradise
something infernal that bore me.

On the day of Armageddon
I don't want to be behind the door,
but dreaming well alert
where I'm safe from forgiveness
("A game that a sixth of January gives me." Silvio Rodríguez). Kaloian Santos

On a good portion of that kind of virtual neighborhood that social media networks are, today there has been an avalanche of verses, songs and happy birthday emoticons. The messages, full of much affection and posted from all cardinal points, celebrate the 75 trips around the sun of Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez.

We know that the son of Argelia and Dagoberto is elusive when it comes to tributes in his honor. But it is almost a sacrilege not to weigh this date and even to feel the birthday as collective.

In this topsy-turvy world, instead of sending the birthday boy gifts on his day, as is proper, I had the audacity to send him a bunch of short and relaxed questions as a form of amusement. Generous, the troubadour answered and, once again, with his answers he even treats us lavishly in the midst of his own celebration.

What is that passage from your childhood that you remember best?

The first slap on the neck of my life: A procession was going up the street where I lived, in my town. On the opposite sidewalk went nuns and on ours went priests. I turned toward the crowd that was in my house's living room and said: Those are the nuns and these are the turds.

How do you remember the sound of your first guitar?

Like something saving.

How did your interest in astronomy begin? Does the dream of being a cosmonaut still endure?

That occurred to me looking at the stars and reading comics.

If you could be a science fiction character, which would you be?

Gilbert Gosseyn, the mutant from "The Players of No-A" by Alfred E. Van Vogt.

Which was the song that took you the longest to compose? And which took you the least?

One of the ones that took the longest: Oh, Melancholy.

One of the ones that took the least: The Dewdrop.

If it wasn't Juana, nor was it her sister, who ate your African candies?

Possibly me myself and afterwards I forgot about it.

Do you have (or did you have) any superstition before going on stage?

Tomás Mendoza told me that my previous life spirit had been a musician and that I should follow that path.

Tell us some hilarious passage that happened to you in the middle of a concert.

It's on film, I saw it once on the networks: In the middle of a song a lady appears who hangs herself from my scarf and pulls, while my "saviors" pull in the opposite direction.

Do you dance?

I did a lot as a child and as a teenager, at the dances in my town. It was always Cuban music.

The most unusual and amusing interpretation of one of your songs that you've heard?

On the eve of those historic carnivals of 1970, some conga drummers from Regla went to ICAIC to ask me permission to use Song of the Chosen One. The chorus was fantastic. In a delirious conga rhythm it kept repeating: "Killing villains… killing villains…"

The collective appropriation of Silvio's birthday goes beyond gratitude for his work and the objective fact that his songs form part of the soundtrack of so many lives and generations. (He must be, perhaps, the most prolific and recognized singer-songwriter of Spanish-speaking countries in the second half of the last century and what has passed of this one).

There is another dimension to celebrate his life and it is his ability to be a contemporary to whoever listens to him.

On one occasion I mentioned that to him, that judging by his outlook on life in every sense, I felt as if we were both of the same generation. He smiled and told me:

"I identify a lot with what some young people think. I really don't feel like I'm from their generation because I'm perfectly aware of the age I am. But I do identify with their attitude. And it's a type of attitude toward life, problems and things that has no age. It's a way of looking at the world and stripping it—as much as possible—of tricks".

In 2012, 2015 and 2018 I had the opportunity and the honor to accompany Silvio photographically and his colleagues in the trade on tours through cities in Chile and Argentina.

On those journeys the stages were always micro stadiums with capacity for between 8 thousand and 12 thousand spectators. On each of those trips, where between 8 and 10 concerts were held in just three weeks, all tickets were sold out weeks before each date.

Particularly in 2015 and in 2018, to close each expedition, Silvio and the band gave a free street concert, exactly as happens in the endless tour through the neighborhoods of Cuba—so far more than one hundred concerts over more than ten years.

In 2015 the place chosen for the final show was Villa Lugano, a humble neighborhood, of workers and economically low class on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. They set up the stage near a small plaza where a bust of José Martí stands.

During the sound check, in the afternoon, I ventured through the streets of the neighborhood to photograph and talk with people. Before, some Argentine friends warned me to be careful with my camera "because that place is rough. They can assault you to rob you violently".

After walking several blocks, turning a corner, I crossed paths with a group of young people who spoke to me as I passed. With skepticism I stopped. They asked me if I was part of the group that was going to play that night. I answered them that in part yes, but I clarified that I was not one of the musicians. Right after I asked them if they knew Silvio's songs. They told me no, that they had found out days before that "someone famous was going to sing in the neighborhood". Later they found out it was the author of Hopefully, a song that was trendy at the time and that they danced in cumbia version in the nightclubs (discos).

What stayed engraved in my memory from that encounter was that, as we said goodbye, they thanked me as if I were the protagonist of the concert. It was the first time in the history of that neighborhood, which they had described to me as unsafe and dangerous, that a renowned international artist had come to sing to them. I shook their hands and continued photographing very calmly, as if I were on the streets of Havana.

That night, in tremendous cold, more than 10 thousand people gathered to see the troubadour, who sang a longer repertoire than usual. There was no incident and neither was there the need for any police force. The audience was an amalgam of Lugano residents, like the young people I had crossed paths with hours before, and middle-class people from Buenos Aires who, perhaps for the first time, set foot in that neighborhood marked as reckless.

In October 2018, after an intense tour of Santiago de Chile and Valparaíso, with packed stages in Córdoba, Rosario and Buenos Aires, Silvio again closed a South American tour with a free, open-air concert.

This time the appointment was in Avellaneda, a municipality where factories abound and, of course, female and male workers. Initially the stage was planned to be set up on a sports ground with capacity for 40 thousand people. But the repercussion on social networks and word of mouth spurred the organizers and they moved the activity to the middle of a large avenue.

Another episode was that coinciding an important Argentine league football match in time and very close in space with the Cuban recital, the game changed its time. In Argentina, where football is the most serious of all passions, that is an unheard of fact.

On the other hand, what was only going to be a presentation became a festival for Cuba and against the United States blockade of the Island. From early afternoon dozens of Argentine artists passed through the stage with their singing. Many people had slept in a nearby plaza to ensure themselves a good spot. When the moment of the troubadour came, the avenue was carpeted with people. The organizers calculated an attendance of 100 thousand souls.

Silvio, at that Avellaneda concert, sang for almost three hours. He pleased with a wide repertoire of classics and gifted a few other songs almost fresh from the oven.

The hit of that night (and of that entire 2018 trip) was Eva, a great song published in 1988, on the album Oh, melancholy, that after so much time the troubadour dusted off and arranged especially with the format that accompanied him on that tour.

The song was appropriated by the tens of thousands of people in attendance, who with the first chords spontaneously raised green handkerchiefs, a symbol of the Right to Safe, Legal and Free Abortion. So Eva, in the midst of that sea of green, without its author imagining it, became one of the anthems of the feminist revolution, the most powerful and important one so far this century in Argentina.

Impossible not to be moved by that scene. Particularly it made me tremble so much that, when for a second I stood behind Silvio to take a panoramic photo, I got so nervous that the photograph came out very blurry. Very bad. It upset me with myself because it was a technically simple shot, with good lighting conditions and other privileges that photographers rarely have. It was just to frame and click.

That "failed" photo I have kept and I love it very much: it is the physical proof that my emotional heart beat faster than the shutter speed of my camera. Fortunately, almost at the end of the song, I tried again and had revenge to register, as it should be, that historic moment.

It was thrilling to go through the faces of the attendees at the Avellaneda concert and note that, for the most part, they were young. It was also historic because, among other reasons, Silvio without publicity, equaled with that recital the convocation that only international rock stars and fashion singers, with a big publicity machine behind them, can achieve in Argentina (one of the most important venues for Latin American music).

The verses of Eva, chorused by a multitude, I heard again in December 2020, outside the Congress of the Nation, when the positive ruling of the law decriminalizing abortion was being celebrated. On that historic early morning dozens of girls under twenty were jumping and singing loudly, as if they were at a football stadium: "Eva leaves and takes flight./ Eva stops being a rib".

I'm on Silvio's side of life always. Or almost always, which is not the same but it's equal. Even, I have no personal conflict with that admiration and affection when I have felt disagreements with him. The power to disagree is a great personal exercise and necessary that the very author of The Stubborn One constantly encourages. Moreover, when it happens that we have different criteria or different views on some particular matter, we are, I believe, a tiny bit better.

We take shelter in his humanity and coherence. We celebrate the life that loves him, that gives him voice. "The one that scolds when it gets stuck,/ the one that even God doesn't excuse". And, with audacity, we even make his birthday a collective party. Much health and very happy birthday, Silvio!