Silvio Rodríguez: the young soldier who wielded the guitar as a rifle and has no time "for waiting"

June 15, 2020

Silvio Rodríguez has had to row with equal passion on two shores: on one side his music; on the other, his political action, which has removed him from the image of a rebel that many constructed around him in the 70s and which is better left untouched to preserve the song as his greatest glory.

Today, at 73 years of age and carrying on his shoulders the weight of a first album that is a classic reference of love of the caliber of "Días y Flores" (1975), he has just released "Para la espera" (2020).

It is his return to an absolutely solitary format where he is not only the composer of the 13 tracks on the album, singing and accompanying himself with the guitar, but also plays bass, percussion and does backup vocals.

As in his essential albums, "Para la espera" has the guitar as its guiding thread. The guitar, the genuine interpreter of his feelings, came into his life as a forbidden love that intensifies amid hostile terrain.

Although percussion and piano were the first instruments his hands caressed, he found his identity in the guitar. He learned to play it in secret while doing mandatory military service, starting in 1964.

"I didn't think I would dedicate myself to singing. I started making songs because I liked music, I had a guitar and I was very bored in the Army," he comments in the documentary "Ojalá" (2013), by filmmaker Nico García.

When his Army companions went to bed "I would take my guitar, I would slide without shoes so they wouldn't hear me, through a window... it was a whole operation of concentration, and then slide, pass some posts (obstacles) and go two or three kilometers away to play the guitar".

From then on, the young soldier's guitar was his regulation weapon for the rest of his life.

When he was demobilized from the Army he returned home for a short time because the world and music were waiting for him eagerly.

Between 1967 and 1969, a type of songs began to spread in Cuba that would later become known as the nueva trova.

The program "Mientras Tanto," through Cuban television, was a key channel for the dissemination of those songs. And Silvio was there with that sadness or nostalgia inherent to the sound of the guitar.

"I was demobilized on June 12, 1967 and debuted on Tuesday, June 13, 1967. It was somewhat violent to leave the Army and take the next step in front of television cameras," he recalls in the documentary "Ojalá".

In that adventure of youth, at the end of 1969 he embarked on the fishing vessel Playa Girón, in which he spent more than four months and where more than 60 songs were born that would become his great catch.

He crossed Cuban borders as a human standard-bearer of the longing for freedom that was felt in the countries of the region, including the Dominican Republic.

By Ramón Almánzar
Santo Domingo