I dared to try to write songs in Bolivia when I heard Silvio and the Nueva Trova. I got pirated CDs of Frank Delgado and Santiago Feliú and got in touch with the mystery of Noel Nicola. I made impressions of their songs and sang them blatantly wherever I went (I wish I were like them!). But in Cuba I understood the importance of a song in society.
I was not aware of this commitment of singers, as Mercedes Sosa called them. Leonard Cohen is exquisitely precise when he uses the term "song worker," and this reality surpassed all my puerile pretensions. How much does a song, a trova, or whatever you want to call it, contain? At the moment I have gone into the investigation of cancionistas (songwriters,) another affectionate term that I heard Colombian musician Alejo García say when referring to the singer-songwriters.
Recently, I returned from a trip to Cuba that has left me, as always, satisfied in my effort to embrace their music. Undoubtedly, Cuba is part of the strong bastion of universal culture, but just as undeniable is its contribution to the trade of writing songs, from the old traditional trova, through its incredible genres derived from the son, to the mature and experimental trova of our generation. There I listened to young people who are around 17 years old, with full-fledged songs, like Silvio himself at that age.
There are very important events such as Romerías de Mayo in Holguín, Longina in Santa Clara, Canto Adentro in Ciego de Ávila, Al Sur de mi Mochila in Cienfuegos and Carlos Puebla in Manzanillo, ideal to be scheduled for a good musical tourism in Cuba.
Cubans say that under each stone on their island there is a troubadour and they are not wrong or exaggerating. There is a relay, very conscious and critical with its current context and with the great challenges to come, in a world where anyone can write a song to make others dance, but few to transcend in the feelings of all the people who listen attentively. Songwriter: do your songs.