Silvio Rodríguez
Encyclopedia
Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez (born November 29, 1946 in San Antonio de los Baños
) is a Cuba
n musician, and a leader of the nueva trova
movement.
He is considered Cuba's best known folk
singer and known for his highly eloquent and symbolic lyrics. Many of his songs have become classics in Latin American music
, such as Ojalá, Playa Girón, Unicornio and La maza. He has released nearly 20 albums.
Rodríguez, musically and politically, is a symbol of the Latin American left wing. His lyrics are notably introspective. His songs combine romanticism, love (even eroticism), revolutionary politics, and idealism.
, a fertile valley in Havana Province known for its tobacco
crop. He was raised in a family of poor farmers. His father, Víctor Dagoberto Rodríguez Ortega, was a farmer and amateur poet who supported socialist causes. His mother, Argelia Domínguez León, was a house wife. On many occasions Rodríguez has spoken how his love of music was developed by his mother, who would pass time singing bolero
s and songs from Santiago
. Although Rodríguez had an uncle who played the bass, his mother had a far greater influence. Later, she also collaborated with him on a few musical works.
When the Revolution led by Fidel Castro
triumphed in January 1959, Rodríguez was only 13 years old, and, like most Cubans of his generation, became involved in the new Revolutionary enthusiasm. He participated in the Literacy Campaign held in 1961, and then started working as a comics designer in a magazine. During this period a friend of his, Lázaro Fundora, taught him how to play the guitar.
Guitar playing took a major role in his life while he was doing his military service in the army, during 1964, but it wasn't until 1967, with his first television experience, that he started to become well known and influential among Cuban revolutionary youth. With pro-revolution yet very independent lyrics (together with his very informal dress code), Rodríguez soon attracted the animosity of some members of the new Culture Ministry, which was devoted to the eradication of the United States
' influence in Cuban culture. In this context, a very important role was played by the cultural institution Casa de las Américas
and its then director Haydée Santamaría, the former a respected revolutionary who participated in the Moncada barracks
assault of 1953 and sister of Abel Santamaría
, who was tortured and killed after the failure of the assault. Haydée Santamaría became a protective mother-figure of the young composers and of several of his colleagues at the time. Casa de las Américas became the home not only for the new Cuban trovadores but also for many other Latin Americans on the left. It was in this institution that Rodríguez met Pablo Milanés
, and Noel Nicola, who along with Rodriguez would become the most famous nueva trova
singers and composers.
In 1969, for almost five months, he worked as part of the crew on the fishing boat Playa Girón, and during this fertile episode he wrote 62 songs, among which are the famous "Ojalá" and "Playa Girón." The lyrics and music of these songs became a book named Canciones del Mar. In 1976, he decided to join Cuban troops in Angola, playing for the soldiers.
After more than 40 years of artistic work, Rodríguez has now written a vast number of songs and poems (said to be between 500 and more than one thousand), many of which have never been set to music and probably never will be. Although his musical knowledge has been continuously increasing (counting among his teachers the famous Cuban composer Leo Brouwer
), he is more widely praised for the poetry in his songs than for the accompanying music. His lyrics are a staple of leftist culture throughout the whole Spanish-speaking world, and he has been banned from the media during several of the dictatorial regimes
that ruled Latin America
in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
His debut album was Dias y Flores, launched in 1975. Al Final de Este Viaje and Cuando Digo Futuro feature songs he composed before Dias y Flores. He reached international popularity in the early 1980s with Rabo de Nube and, in particular, Unicornio. In the early part of his career his work displayed a fair amount of revolutionary optimism. Mujeres, released in 1979, is in contrast a romantic and highly intimist album. In the middle of his career, Silvio Rodriguez experimented with sounds and rhythms departing from his trademark acoustic guitar, accompanied by the group Afrocuba (e.g. in Causas y Azares). At maturity, Silvio Rodriguez thoroughly purified his sound through a return to acoustic guitar, great care and sophistication in the voice, and exclusive control of the production process from beginning to end. His lyrics became more introspective, at times even self-absorbed or self-justifying, expressing melancholic longings about the shortcomings of real-life socialism in Cuba while vindicating idealism and revolutionary hope amongst the youth. The trilogy, called Silvio, Rodriguez, and Dominguez (his first name, his father's last name, his mother's last name) displays sound artistic talent. The doubts, absent in the early part of his career, also correspond to the fall of communism worldwide and the so-called Special Period in Cuba. An unnoticed recurrent theme in the lyrics of the early part of his career is that of death, particularly although not only as associated with guerrilla warfare. In contrast to the explicitness of his early songs and political positions, there was a displacement of emphasis in his later years toward fantasy and dreams. Both, however, are about an alternative that is not present but is called for, or what Laclau would call a longing for a "missing fullness". This is true politically, romantically, and existentially. In a similar way, the unusual confessional tone of many of his songs allows for an unorthodox combination of transgression, eroticism, longing, and at times (probably accurate) self-deprecation in many of his lyrics.
The entire work of Silvio Rodriguez offers an intimate and introspective window into the life cycle of the artist. If the lyrics of the early part of his career are about revolutionary enthusiasm, love encounters and disappointments, as well as sensual desire, and if the middle-aged Silvio is more self-questioning, often looking backward; his most recent albums, such as Cita Con Angeles, talk in part about his life as a grandfather and has a certain focus on children, while Erase Que Se Era is the release (with all the means that come with being an established artist) of songs written early in his youth but never previously recorded. Mariposas also featured two classics composed in his youth.
Silvio Rodriguez stands out in the Spanish-speaking world for the intimacy and subtlety of his lyrics, as well as for his acoustic melodies and "chord picking." He is particularly popular amongst intellectual circles of the left in Latin America and Spain. He has also often served as Cuban cultural emissary in events of solidarity, whether in Chile (Silvio Rodriguez in Chile, 1991) or Argentina (En Vivo en Argentina, recorded in 1984), both massive concerts given shortly after the fall of the right-wing dictatorships. Cuban flags are always conspicuous in the crowd during his concerts.
In 2007, he received a doctorate honoris causa from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru. (Lima
, Peru
).
Rodriguez has been a major influence on many folk artists, including the Swedish artist José González
.
. However in 2010, he obtained a U.S. visa and is performing at venues in Puerto Rico (May 30), New York (June 4 and 10), San Francisco (Oakland, June 12), Los Angeles (June 17), Washington (June 19), and Orlando (June 23). These are his first appearances in the U.S. in 30 years..
San Antonio de los Baños
San Antonio de los Baños is a municipality and city in the Artemisa Province of Cuba.It is located 26 km from the city of Havana, and the Ariguanabo River runs through it. The city was founded in 1802....
) is a Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n musician, and a leader of the nueva trova
Nueva trova
Nueva trova is a movement in Cuban music that emerged around 1967/68 after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the consequent political and social changes....
movement.
He is considered Cuba's best known folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
singer and known for his highly eloquent and symbolic lyrics. Many of his songs have become classics in Latin American music
Latin American music
Latin American music, found within Central and South America, is a series of musical styles and genres that mixes influences from Spanish, African and indigenous sources, that has recently become very famous in the US.-Argentina:...
, such as Ojalá, Playa Girón, Unicornio and La maza. He has released nearly 20 albums.
Rodríguez, musically and politically, is a symbol of the Latin American left wing. His lyrics are notably introspective. His songs combine romanticism, love (even eroticism), revolutionary politics, and idealism.
Biography
Rodríguez was born on November 29, 1946 in San Antonio de los BañosSan Antonio de los Baños
San Antonio de los Baños is a municipality and city in the Artemisa Province of Cuba.It is located 26 km from the city of Havana, and the Ariguanabo River runs through it. The city was founded in 1802....
, a fertile valley in Havana Province known for its tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
crop. He was raised in a family of poor farmers. His father, Víctor Dagoberto Rodríguez Ortega, was a farmer and amateur poet who supported socialist causes. His mother, Argelia Domínguez León, was a house wife. On many occasions Rodríguez has spoken how his love of music was developed by his mother, who would pass time singing bolero
Bolero
Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.The term is also used for some art music...
s and songs from Santiago
Santiago de Cuba
Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city of Cuba and capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province in the south-eastern area of the island, some south-east of the Cuban capital of Havana....
. Although Rodríguez had an uncle who played the bass, his mother had a far greater influence. Later, she also collaborated with him on a few musical works.
When the Revolution led by Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
triumphed in January 1959, Rodríguez was only 13 years old, and, like most Cubans of his generation, became involved in the new Revolutionary enthusiasm. He participated in the Literacy Campaign held in 1961, and then started working as a comics designer in a magazine. During this period a friend of his, Lázaro Fundora, taught him how to play the guitar.
Guitar playing took a major role in his life while he was doing his military service in the army, during 1964, but it wasn't until 1967, with his first television experience, that he started to become well known and influential among Cuban revolutionary youth. With pro-revolution yet very independent lyrics (together with his very informal dress code), Rodríguez soon attracted the animosity of some members of the new Culture Ministry, which was devoted to the eradication of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
' influence in Cuban culture. In this context, a very important role was played by the cultural institution Casa de las Américas
Casa de las Américas
Casa de las Américas is an organization that was founded by the Cuban Government in April 1959, four months after the Cuban Revolution, for the purpose of developing and extending the socio-cultural relations with the countries of Latin America, the Caribbean and the rest of the world...
and its then director Haydée Santamaría, the former a respected revolutionary who participated in the Moncada barracks
Moncada Barracks
The Moncada Barracks was a military barracks in Santiago de Cuba, named after General Guillermón Moncada, a hero of the War of Independence. On July 26, 1953, the barracks was the site of an armed attack by a small group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro. This armed attack is widely accepted...
assault of 1953 and sister of Abel Santamaría
Abel Santamaría
Abel Santamaria Cuadrado was an important leader in the Cuban Revolutionary movement....
, who was tortured and killed after the failure of the assault. Haydée Santamaría became a protective mother-figure of the young composers and of several of his colleagues at the time. Casa de las Américas became the home not only for the new Cuban trovadores but also for many other Latin Americans on the left. It was in this institution that Rodríguez met Pablo Milanés
Pablo Milanés
Pablo Milanés Arias is a Cuban singer-songwriter and guitar player. He studied at a conservatory in Havana. He is considered one of the founders of the Cuban nueva trova, along with Silvio Rodríguez and Noel Nicola...
, and Noel Nicola, who along with Rodriguez would become the most famous nueva trova
Nueva trova
Nueva trova is a movement in Cuban music that emerged around 1967/68 after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and the consequent political and social changes....
singers and composers.
In 1969, for almost five months, he worked as part of the crew on the fishing boat Playa Girón, and during this fertile episode he wrote 62 songs, among which are the famous "Ojalá" and "Playa Girón." The lyrics and music of these songs became a book named Canciones del Mar. In 1976, he decided to join Cuban troops in Angola, playing for the soldiers.
After more than 40 years of artistic work, Rodríguez has now written a vast number of songs and poems (said to be between 500 and more than one thousand), many of which have never been set to music and probably never will be. Although his musical knowledge has been continuously increasing (counting among his teachers the famous Cuban composer Leo Brouwer
Leo Brouwer
Juan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida is a Cuban composer, conductor and guitarist. He is the grandson of Cuban composer Ernestina Lecuona Casado.-Biography:...
), he is more widely praised for the poetry in his songs than for the accompanying music. His lyrics are a staple of leftist culture throughout the whole Spanish-speaking world, and he has been banned from the media during several of the dictatorial regimes
Dictatorship
A dictatorship is defined as an autocratic form of government in which the government is ruled by an individual, the dictator. It has three possible meanings:...
that ruled Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
His debut album was Dias y Flores, launched in 1975. Al Final de Este Viaje and Cuando Digo Futuro feature songs he composed before Dias y Flores. He reached international popularity in the early 1980s with Rabo de Nube and, in particular, Unicornio. In the early part of his career his work displayed a fair amount of revolutionary optimism. Mujeres, released in 1979, is in contrast a romantic and highly intimist album. In the middle of his career, Silvio Rodriguez experimented with sounds and rhythms departing from his trademark acoustic guitar, accompanied by the group Afrocuba (e.g. in Causas y Azares). At maturity, Silvio Rodriguez thoroughly purified his sound through a return to acoustic guitar, great care and sophistication in the voice, and exclusive control of the production process from beginning to end. His lyrics became more introspective, at times even self-absorbed or self-justifying, expressing melancholic longings about the shortcomings of real-life socialism in Cuba while vindicating idealism and revolutionary hope amongst the youth. The trilogy, called Silvio, Rodriguez, and Dominguez (his first name, his father's last name, his mother's last name) displays sound artistic talent. The doubts, absent in the early part of his career, also correspond to the fall of communism worldwide and the so-called Special Period in Cuba. An unnoticed recurrent theme in the lyrics of the early part of his career is that of death, particularly although not only as associated with guerrilla warfare. In contrast to the explicitness of his early songs and political positions, there was a displacement of emphasis in his later years toward fantasy and dreams. Both, however, are about an alternative that is not present but is called for, or what Laclau would call a longing for a "missing fullness". This is true politically, romantically, and existentially. In a similar way, the unusual confessional tone of many of his songs allows for an unorthodox combination of transgression, eroticism, longing, and at times (probably accurate) self-deprecation in many of his lyrics.
The entire work of Silvio Rodriguez offers an intimate and introspective window into the life cycle of the artist. If the lyrics of the early part of his career are about revolutionary enthusiasm, love encounters and disappointments, as well as sensual desire, and if the middle-aged Silvio is more self-questioning, often looking backward; his most recent albums, such as Cita Con Angeles, talk in part about his life as a grandfather and has a certain focus on children, while Erase Que Se Era is the release (with all the means that come with being an established artist) of songs written early in his youth but never previously recorded. Mariposas also featured two classics composed in his youth.
Silvio Rodriguez stands out in the Spanish-speaking world for the intimacy and subtlety of his lyrics, as well as for his acoustic melodies and "chord picking." He is particularly popular amongst intellectual circles of the left in Latin America and Spain. He has also often served as Cuban cultural emissary in events of solidarity, whether in Chile (Silvio Rodriguez in Chile, 1991) or Argentina (En Vivo en Argentina, recorded in 1984), both massive concerts given shortly after the fall of the right-wing dictatorships. Cuban flags are always conspicuous in the crowd during his concerts.
In 2007, he received a doctorate honoris causa from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru. (Lima
Lima
Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...
, Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
).
Rodriguez has been a major influence on many folk artists, including the Swedish artist José González
José González
José González is a Swedish-Argentine indie folk singer-songwriter and guitarist from Gothenburg, Sweden.González is also a member of Swedish band Junip, along with Elias Araya and Tobias Winterkorn.- Biography :...
.
U.S. Appearance
Silvio Rodríguez was denied a U.S. visa in several times, and it was specially controversial in year 2009 when he was invited to celebrate the 90th birthday of Pete SeegerPete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
. However in 2010, he obtained a U.S. visa and is performing at venues in Puerto Rico (May 30), New York (June 4 and 10), San Francisco (Oakland, June 12), Los Angeles (June 17), Washington (June 19), and Orlando (June 23). These are his first appearances in the U.S. in 30 years..
Discography
- 1975 - Días y Flores
- 1978 - Al Final de Este Viaje...
- 1979 - Mujeres
- 1979 - Rabo de Nube
- 1982 - Unicornio
- 1984 - Tríptico: Volumes I, II & III
- 1986 - Causas y Azares
- 1988 - Oh, Melancolía
- 1991 - Silvio en Chile (Live Concert with Irakere)
- 1992 - Silvio
- 1992 - Mano a mano (Silvio Rodríguez y Luis Eduardo Aute)Mano a mano (Silvio Rodríguez y Luis Eduardo Aute)Mano a Mano is collaboration album from the singer-songwriters Luis Eduardo Aute and Silvio Rodriguez from Spain and Cuba respectively.Recorded live in Madrid on September 24, 1993.-Disc 1:#"Anda"...
- 1994 - Rodríguez
- 1996 - Domínguez
- 1998 - Descartes
- 1999 - Mariposas
- 2001 - En Vivo en Argentina (Live Concert with Pablo Milanés)
- 2002 - Expedición
- 2003 - Cita con Ángeles
- 2006 - Érase Que Se Era
- 2010 - Segunda Cita
External links
- Official Silvio Rodriguez's website Songs, pictures, writings (in Spanish)
- Official Silvio Rodriguez's blog - More than 5800 followers (in Spanish)
- Analysis of Silvio Rodriguez Songs Meaning of lyrics (in Spanish)
- Che, Guía y Ejemplo: - Songs of Silvio Rodriguez dedicated to Che Guevara
- Hasta Siempre Commandante - performed live by Silvio Rodriguez
- TRANS Analysis of the harmonies of Silvio's songs, socio-cultural background
- Brief reviews of Silvio's albums
- Silvio's page in Patria Grande
- Cuban Singer Complains that U.S. Didn’t Give Him Visa by the Latin American Herald Tribune
- Cuba's Silvio Rodriguez Dedicates Song to 'Che' AP, July 23, 2009
- Cuban Folk Singer Plays Rare US Show June 5, 2010
- Silvio Rodriguez Concert in USA Photo Feature by Bill Hackwell, Havana Times, June 17, 2010