Date: 2023-02-17
Time: 06:43:45 UTC
Title: Copacetic Music Hour Preview, 2/10/23: Silvio Rodriguez
Another week has passed, which means it's time for another episode of the
copacetic music hour! This week we'll enjoy Cuban musician and
singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez Dominguez, better known as Silvio Rodriguez.
Silvio is considered Cuba's greatest folk singer and the leader of the nueva
trova musical movement of the late 1960s. Born July 16, 1948 in San Antonio de
los Banos, Havana Province, Rodriguez was the son of poor farmers. His father
was an amateur poet who supported socialist causes while his mother was a
singer as a teenager. At age 2, Silvio first started singing for his father's
friends, and he would win a music competition on the station CMQ not long after
for singing the bolero Viajera. At age five, he would receive a conga drum as a
gift from his uncle Ramiro, which he would use to imitate the rhythms of Benny
More and Orquesta Aragon. His father sent him to the La Milagrosa Conservatory
at age 7, but he dropped out early to study literature instead.
Silvio's life would be changed irreversibly at age 13 when the Cuban Revolution
happened. He would join the San Antonio de los Banos chapter of the socialist
youth organization created by Che Guevara. At the same time, he enrolled in
night school at the Carlos Finlay school to study for his bachaillerato
post-secondary degree, where he became friends with Vecinte Feliu, another
future member of the nueva trova musical movement. Still just a teenager, he
would become part of the Conrado Benitez literacy brigades in the Escambray
Mountains, teaching peasants history, geography, grammar, and mathematics.
After returning to Havana in 1962, he joined the communist magazine Mella and
extensively read literary works by Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda,
and Federico Garcia Lorca, amongst others. It was also at Mella that he would
learn guitar from his colleague Lazaro Fundora. At age 17, Rodriguez was
drafted into the Cuban military (the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias), where he
learned more about playing the guitar. While serving, he would write his first
songs, the boleros Saudade and La cascada, about love.
Rodriguez would finally debut before the Cuban public on June 13, 1967 with a
performance on the television program Musica y estrellas. Despite stating that
he felt panicked before television lights and cameras, he would go on to be a
successful television host. He hosted the show Mientras tanto, named after one
of his songs, between November 1967 and the middle of 1968. The show featured
notable Cuban artists like Bola de Nieve, Omara Portuondo, and Elena Burke,
amongst others. With these landmark television performances, he not only became
influential amongst Cuban youth, but also the leader of the nueva trova musical
movement. Although his music drew the ire of the Cuban Culture Ministry, the
Casa de las Americas cultural institution led by respected revolutionary Haydee
Santamaria provided a safe haven for trovadores like Rodriguez, Pablo Milanes,
and Noel Nicola.
While working on a fishing boat called Playa Giron for five months in 1969, he
wrote some 62 songs, including his famous hits Ojala and Playa Giron. In 1975
he released his debut album, Dias y flores, and in 1976 he performed for Cuban
troops in Angola. Over his more than four decade long career, Rodriguez wrote
between 500 and 1000 songs and poems, not all of which were set to music. His
work is a staple of leftist culture in the Spanish-speaking world, marked by
introspective lyrics exploring revolutionary enthusiasm, sharing love
encounters, questioning the self, and in later life, focusing on his life as a
grandfather.
Tonight, as always, we'll enjoy a sampling of Silvio's hits alongside a
fireside IRC chat at the tilde.chat channel tilderadio (#tilderadio). Join us!
