When I went to live in Quito in 1988, it didn’t take long for me to become immersed in the music of the country and the region. And I found people refreshingly indifferent to, though not ignorant of, the US or British pop or rock music that I would hear in the UK.
Above all, I found people proud of their own strong musical traditions. It was, in hindsight, a relief to get away from the monolingual culture of the world of pop and rock I grew up listening to.
And it didn’t take me long to hear of Silvio Rodríguez, one of Latin America’s greatest singer-songwriters. Rodríguez is Cuban and was born in 1946. He was a leading figure of the Nueva Trova movement.
I found his music, full of beauty, passion and poetry, moved me in ways that virtually no popular music in English ever did. Thoughtful and committed, his songs speak directly to the heart.
In my experience, Latin Americans might not agree with all – or indeed any – of his politics, but they could still be stirred by Rodríguez’s passionate and lyrical songs.
Without doubt, discovering his music – along with the voices of other musicians from the region, such as Mercedes Sosa and Víctor Heredia – was one of the most thrilling periods of my musical education.
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In 1969, Rodríguez spent time on a Cuban fishing boat, which operated off the Atlantic coasts of Africa. This was apparently a very fertile period for the singer/songwriter, with over 60 songs composed in that time (many hundreds have followed since). His career was almost literally launched.
