By Juan José Olivares Tiempo in La Jornada on June 10, 2021
Silvio Rodriguez, photo: Bill Hackwell
Once, a farmer from a Latin American country who had been cured by a Cuban doctor said that what impressed him most was that “Cuba did not offer what it had left over, but shared what it had”.
The above anecdote is, obviously, from a Cuban who has shared for decades beautiful graphemes sonorized with an intangible palette of colors, with which he has painted ideas, thoughts and introspections on the canvas of life in song.
A piece of music is a piece of energy that a human materializes and shares with others.
There are many types but all, in some way, have their audience. Sometimes the songs that don’t have an audience, they create one. For me, composing is a game; it’s like when I was a child they took me to a park: hours of wonder. Then comes the workshop, the rational, what (Igor) Stravinsky talked about in his memorable lectures. But this is a science in which there is also a lot of room. Especially if one is not one of those who are not satisfied with the first idea and likes to investigate the many variants that arise from a motivation. So, instead of “killing and salting”, I prefer to get complicated, I’m not in a hurry to put an end to it. Many songs stay in a kind of limbo waiting for me to say goodbye, until one day, sometimes years later, we meet again and I rediscover them. Then I include them in a concert or an album.
This man who speaks, when he was very young, drew comics in a magazine, but gave up the pencil and brush, and also abandoned his piano studies to pick up a guitar. Since he was 20 years old, he decided that the beautiful writing could save the world together with that companion: his guitar, “which has accompanied me most of my life. However, I have been inattentive to her, forgetful, but never ungrateful. She knows me and I think she not only puts up with me but even spoils me, because when I come back after my absences she continues to make me fall in love”.
Each creator has a unique process.
I don’t have an algorithm. Sometimes I need time to cover everything. One day I discovered a theme in an essay. I failed it and went home. Two other topics came out of that one. But it took me three months to articulate the links. Once that was solved, the piece was ready in just a few minutes. Other times you see everything very clearly, right away. It’s a job that has its complications and, of course, also its rewards.
In a song, can you see colors?
Orchestras often work with color and instrumentalists often use it as a resource. Impressionism was a period in which plastic art and music were very much interrelated. I have no doubt that, in a song that proposes it, color can be seen as well as heard.
Born in 1946 “where there is a river, at the top of a hill”, in San Antonio de los Baños, Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez is a bucolic Cuban who speaks and represents for the world a creative effigy of redemption.
In his beginnings, he sang with his guitar on a street corner, in cultural centers, universities, penitentiaries, or in the neighborhoods. Silvio has sung to humans, to the homeland, to friendship, to love and heartbreak, to hope and death, and to dreams.
The dream world is a place where perhaps we are what we want to be. What are dreams for you?
Dreams are like immense paddocks where angels and demons run happily, in total freedom.
Nobel Peace Prize to the Cuban doctors
Silvio, the musician, painter, photographer, activist, but above all, indispensable human being, loves to write… and of course, always carries a camera that will possibly help him capture “some UFO”.
By e-mail, he offered La Jornada his reflections on himself and his eclectic homeland, among them, the promotion of the campaign in favor of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the Cuban doctors who are members of the Henry Reeve Brigade.
“The quality, but above all the humanity of Cuban medicine is an indisputable achievement,” he says.
Last year, when it was 15 years since its foundation – named after a young man from Brooklyn who fought for our independence – they had already treated more than 4 million people in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and had saved more than 93,000 lives.
He hopes that this brigade will be awarded the Nobel Prize because “they are an example, a symbol of universal solidarity, even challenging our own possibilities. With this vocation of service, they have opened fronts of solidarity in many critical situations and countries of the world”.
He relates that his childhood was spent in times when Cuba was not like that. There were conscientious doctors and some public hospitals, but “they could not even remotely offer the variety and complexity of treatments to all Cubans, without distinction, let alone completely free of charge, as is done now. Since the revolutionary triumph of 1959, waves of young people who previously had no access to university began to train as doctors radically improving the health system. Founding scientific research were projects that Fidel Castro personally promoted”.
He comments that one of the consequences of that philosophy is Operation Miracle, a joint plan of Fidel and former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, which has restored vision to millions of ophthalmologic patients in several Latin American countries.
“Today, Cuba’s health system continues to be active but with great effort, due to the shortages imposed on us by the U.S. government blockade.”
What would Cuba be like if that lethal blockade did not exist?
It is a great mystery. There are those who say that all our ills are the fault of the blockade. But there are also those who think that everything is the fault of the government, for being overly controlling. Between the two positions, as I said, there are many nuances. My opinion is that the blockade has an enormous influence on our problems. And I think that if the enemies of the Revolution believed that our misfortunes are only our fault, they would have already lifted the blockade to destroy us. Of course, there is also the anti-Castro business, which even influences the U.S. elections. That is what keeps alive this kind of industry that employs many people, especially in Florida, and mobilizes a lot of public opinion. In other words, it is a big business. I think that if under the cruelest blockade we have obtained our own vaccine candidates (and I say this without triumphalism), what would we not be capable of if we lived in peace, with the same opportunities as other countries? A Cuba without a blockade would be the opportunity to be and to show ourselves fully as we are.
In the U.S. senators presented a bill for Congress to lift the economic blockade against Cuba.
In Cuba, the approaches of U.S. politicians are also usually seen in both ways. When Raúl Castro and Barack Obama met, at the beginning of that attempt at détente, our more conservative colleagues, who predominate in the mainstream media, launched a barrage of mistrust. I have always been sure that in the people-to-people exchange we will win hearts and respect, because the people of Cuba are very friendly and noble. And with the same sincerity that shakes a hand, he makes his sovereign vocation very clear.
The EU has asked Cuba to treat with “dignity and respect” a dissident artist.
Those of us who are old enough have lived and remember armed invasions, speedboats shooting, parachutes with weapons for subversion, bombs and sabotage, assassinations, introduction of bacteriological agents… The blockade began in 1960 with the suspension of the sugar quota that the United States bought from the compliant governments in Cuba; today it applies sanctions worth millions to any bank that carries out a transaction with us; it blacklists shipping companies that bring in merchandise and fines people who visit us without their permission. They have said it in plain language; it is a plan aimed at creating such a deep economic crisis that the people will come to hate their government and surrender to its interests. Can they be blamed for lacking any other perspective? Could the continuous abuse of six decades have something to do with the disappointment of some young people? In Cuba, a country where justice has paid a high price in lives and sacrifices, there are also deficiencies and even institutions that sometimes do not act as expected.
“One of the first acts of President Diaz-Canel was to approve the creation of a foundation promoted by citizens of San Antonio de los Baños, with the purpose of stopping the advanced deterioration of the Ariguanabo River and its forests. After its creation, the Ariguanabo Foundation has requested several times to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment that this natural habitat be declared a Protected Area. There was no response. We insisted. As I once said when I was a congressman: our socialism is good but perfectible. Of course, this is something that concerns those responsible for devising policies and those who guard them. I just say what I think.”
Para la espera marks the first time he releases an album only on platforms. Today, Cuban society is more aware of the internet. But there are technological gaps that are exploited by portals adverse to the Cuban government and people.
The initial mistrust that there was in Cuba with those who were leaving was giving way over the years and became a constructive dialogue with the immigrants. That is why I do not believe that it is the diaspora, or at least all of it, that finances these portals, although there are immigrants who like to call themselves exiles and choose to join the imperial hostility. In the United States, anti-Castroism is an old business in which the ultra-right is very much involved; a business that handles millions annually, that finances radio and television stations, programs, campaigns, artists who believe in it or who lend themselves to it. The United States has an apparatus of ministerial proportions that closely monitors the Helms-Burton extraterritorial law. Donald Trump implemented more than 200 extra measures to stifle Cuba. Biden promised to repeal some of them and has not done so, even in the face of the pressure of the pandemic. I have no doubt that there are people paid to flood us with bad opinions and try to discourage us. In Cuba there are, as always, extreme positions and there is also an intermediate range with diverse points of view. From the orthodoxy there have been accusations of “centrism”, as if balance were reprehensible. Apropos of this I published in my blog (Segunda Cita) a short text entitled I am a man of the center.
“I am a man of the center. I began by being born, without realizing it, to see myself in the center of life. I was still a child when I tore myself away from my family to throw myself into the center of the night, with the tinder of a primer and a manual. Not long after, I arrived at the center of myself, with a gun in my hand, defending a country that was reaching its center. I had reached the center of the collective consciousness and still did not know the center of human existence. That supreme center awaited me in the intimacies of a young woman. And it was the center of the world, of joy and pain, of bliss and death, lightning, deluge. From the previous desert and that humidity I reached the center of my words. To the center of spasms I gave life to innocents. To the center of friendship I made a creed and challenged mountains. To the center of death I have survived my own miseries. And if ahead there is any center there I will be, in the ghostly mist of millions of names that continue in the center of everything, learning to be born.”
Is it a time to be self-critical today on the island?
Being self-critical is essential to move forward. Life is a constant construction. On the political level it is the same, with the aggravating factor that vanity can be very harmful. Every deficiency that a country like Cuba does not detect and fight against becomes an argument for its detractors. Cubans are a people with a more than proven conscience and capacity for resistance; but even virtue needs support. Criticism and self-criticism are healthy exercises.
Has anything changed in Silvio in the pandemic?
The pandemic has shown us how similar we are, especially in something as basic as biological fragility. But the truth is that it is disconcerting to learn that some have multiplied their gains. That means that, even with the fear that makes us alike, life continues to be more promising for those who have than for those who don’t.
What he misses the most is not meeting his people, those in the neighborhoods. He says: “I miss the contact with people. Before the pandemic we did one or two concerts every month. This meant rehearsals, coordination, human contacts before the culmination of the meeting. Once a year we also toured abroad for two or three weeks. These are activities that are missed.”
What is the energy of the meetings in the neighborhoods like?
Most of our concerts are in the most precarious neighborhoods. These meetings have been generating a kind of complicity. People already know what we are about and invariably we are received with a spirit of cooperation. I remember a neighborhood where we began to set up the stage, horns, cables, lights, and it started to rain. It was an area of unpaved streets and it became a muddy mess. This made some structures unsafe and there was talk of postponing the concert. When I found out about the situation, I went there to evaluate whether or not to postpone the concert. When I arrived, I saw that the neighbors of the neighborhood, including elderly people, were with buckets and pots from their houses, removing mud from the bases of the stage. They were very worried that the concert would be cancelled because of that situation… It was very moving. The meeting could not take place that day, because the water continued, but we promised to do it as soon as we could. Then they asked us not to take anything with us, they were afraid that everything would disappear. And we did not move a single resource, until the weather allowed us to perform the concert. In the evenings those neighbors took turns to take care of everything. Many things like that have happened to us.
He adds: “The only thing that is not the same in neighborhood concerts is that the music takes place in the streets, in front of the spectators’ houses. In everything else they are identical because we didn’t want to make “second-rate presentations”. The purpose has always been to bring real concerts, with the same rigor and the same demand in rehearsals; with the same sound quality, with the same vocation of delivery as in the best theater.”
The ribbon on the gift of these presentations is the presence of children
“The children have given us their drawings, with all possible themes, some inspired by songs. Sometimes they have started to draw around the stage, while the music lasts. The neighborhoods are full of children. And the songs also come out of the children’s drawings.”
Argelia Dominguez de Leon, Silvio’s mother of the artist, passed away last April. El Colibrí, which belongs to his repertoire, was a piece he sang with her.
“As much as (T. S.) Eliot may have written that ‘April is the cruelest month,’ the poor thing is not to be blamed for our sorrows. On the other hand, The Hummingbird was a song that came to me through the family. My maternal grandmother said it was “del tiempo españa”. She taught it to her children and I heard it from my mother. Years later I began to sing it on tour, especially at the end of concerts. Then I discovered similar versions in several Latin American countries. The funny thing is that everywhere they said it was from there. It’s a beautiful legend about the sacrifice of love; that’s why it has no time or frontiers”.
Have you found bridges between sound expression and plastic art, painting?
My first profession was drawing, design, the visual. Maybe that can be felt in some of the sung images. Besides musicians and poets, I have always had very good friends, painters and photographers. In Mexico too; for example, I love Graciela Iturbide, Pedro Meyer, Eniac Martinez, who left us not long ago, being so young. I always carry a camera. Once I was asked why and I answered that I wanted to be ready when a UFO passed by. I am still ready.
Why did you choose to read a poem by Nicolás Guillén in your meeting with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador? What is your opinion of it?
It is not just any poem; it is The Wall, which expresses an idea of kindness and solidarity, without yielding to perfidy.
To the friend’s heart, it opens the wall; to the poison and the dagger, it closes the wall; to the myrtle and the mint, it opens the wall; to the serpent’s tooth, it closes the wall; to the nightingale in the flower, it opens the wall….
Let us build a wall by joining all hands; the blacks, their black hands, the whites, their white hands. A wall that goes from the beach to the mountain, from the mountain to the beach, well, over the horizon…..
Silvio says that he first met Beatriz Gutiérrez, wife of the president, who is a “brilliant intellectual, and through her I met her partner Andrés Manuel, when he was head of the government of the CDMX. Back then, “we did some concerts in the Zócalo, we fraternized and talked a lot. We saw each other whenever he went to Mexico. Later I went to support him when he denounced the presidential fraud. At that time I was a deputy to the National Assembly and before taking the plane I left a letter of resignation. I could not allow my country to be involved, being -as it was- a personal decision. Luckily there were no problems and when I returned I tore up the letter… I feel affection and respect for Andrés Manuel, a man consistent with his ideas; a worker of exemplary honesty, with a dream of justice for an admirable people, called Mexico”.
Source: La Jornada, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English