When I came back from the Peace Corps in the early 80's I was looking for something that would remind me of the beauty of the Spanish language and hispanic culture of the country - a sort of keepsake.

Ironically I stumbled onto Canciones Urgentes - Los Grandes Exitos by Cuban poet and singer Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez, instead of a Domincan artist, and totally fell in love.

The mere sound of the music can sometimes bring me to tears now, but it was the humanitarian heart of the poetry that struck me then and now as almost divine - ironic coming from an artist who strongly supported his godless communist country's policies.

Not since the protest singers of the 60's and 70's had I been so moved by such music. My consolation that he was not Dominican came when I mentioned to a middle-aged co-worker originally from the DR that there was a Cuban singer as famous as the Beatles who I loved but could not remember the name of.

Without hesitation she mentioned Rodríguez' name. She too had grown up with his music. So I feel a little less guilty now. But I still wonder who are the ideological movers in our music today? I'm sure Michael Jackson will come up and maybe "The Boss". Which current artists inspire you emotionally and intellectually?

In the Spanish language, definitely Maná. If you've never seen their MTV Unplugged concert then you must.

A sampling of the concert.

In English I'd have to say India.Arie.

Edit:

Altho they broke up a few years ago I also love the Dead Can Dance.

Sampling 1.

Sampling 2. (click on American Dreaming)

& there's also Sufjan Stevens!

They're not particularly current but I've always admired Suzanne Vega and Paul Simon for their lyrics.

I like Suzanne Vega for her sharp observations of everyday things as much as anything--Tom's Diner is the best known example, but less well known:

"Institution green
The walls are cracked and dim and we are
Standing in a line
Waiting for our faces to be seen

Institution green
Watch the floor and count the hours
None will meet my eye
Private people in this public place

I wonder if she'll take a look
Find my name inside that book
Lose me on the printed page
Where to point the aimless rage

I cast my vote upon this earth
Take my place for it's worth
Hunger for a pair of eyes
To notice and to recognize"

Her lyrics are very sensual at times as well, as in:

I tell of nights when I could taste the salt on his skin

Speaking of sensual, I also like Al Stewart's lyrics--an example from the Year of the Cat:

"She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat."

I was playing a bard in a roleplaying game and I promised somebody a song for them--which I wrote (well, words, no music), but I remember thinking as i reordered words to fit the rhyme and metre and thinking of how Paul Simon manages to fit a natural sounding conversation to a rigid rhyme and meter scheme in the verses of "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover". He writes beautiful lyrics about relationships between people as well...Hearts and Bones is a personal fave on those lines.

But I have to say that I think there's a distinct difference between songs and poetry. When singing, there's an awful lot beyond the words...take the closing lines of Annie Lennox, "Why"

Do you know how I feel?
Cause I don't think you know...I don't think you know what I feel
You don't know what I feel

On paper, there's not much there, but she goes through three distinct emotional states while singing those lines.

David Wilcox and John McCutcheon have always struck me as unusually fine lyricists -- and great musicians. Plenty of CDs out there to listen to.

I agree with including Paul Simon, especially in his Garfunkel partnered days. Even if this dates me and does so accurately.

Unfortunately, I never got to experience the 60's and 70's - the time when Silvio released his best-known material - but from what I've seen in documentaries of the era and listening to the work of artists of that time, I would say the cultural circumstances are different. Not to say that it's worse to be an artist nowadays and that it's impossible for genius to exist, but I wonder how "genius" can be nurtured in today's world. (I'm not pessimistic, though. Genius always comes through.)

Anyways, following on your Silvio reference, a songwriter whose lyrics are really poetry in Spanish is Pedro Guerra. I have only one of his albums, Bolsillos (Pockets) and have heard stuff from his other works. The song I linked to above, "El circo de la realidad" (The circus of reality), touches on the semblance of reality that reality is today, sort of like Plato's myth of the cave. As I see it, it's a comment on reality TV and the media.

Re: the issue of words and music, I think they have to be complementary (talking about my own taste here). They have to feed off each other. Of course, there are some songwriters whose words can be read without the music and they stand on their own. I believe poetry to be a self-contained entity, it doesn't need music, because the music is already in it, well, the rhythm, at least: Didn't Nietzsche say in his Birth of Tragedy that poetry imitates music? Poems have been put to music, of course... But it doesn't really do it for me when the words are amazing, but the music doesn't say anything to me, either emotionally or intellectually (however, to stay me with me, it ultimately needs to touch me emotionally, no matter how conceptually and technically brilliant the music might be. The key word is passion).

The example JC gave of the Annie Lennox song is a really good one of when music, along with the vocal melody and the singer's interpretation, fills in the blanks of what the words suggest. Annie is so dramatic and seems to have such a deep/complex spirit that it comes through in her multi-layered singing.

But to try to answer your question, I would have no idea of poets/songwriters who are the ideological movers of today... Silvio's music is still heard in Latin America, even if it's more like a cult. Young people listen to Silvio when they get to college and if they're in the Social Sciences or Humanities department, LOL! I think our society now is so fragmented that I don't know if there's any one or a few artists/poets who are moving people en masse. The only bands that come to mind who might fit that description are Radiohead and The Roots, but again, questions of demographics have to be considered, IMO.

Ultimately, I believe that today's poetry is created through images. The poetic word has given way to the poetic (visual) image. Today's artistic ideological movers are probably movie and music video directors.

In music, for me, Joni Mitchell is tops. Hejira is, IMO, in the same league of masterpieces by Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieslowski or Albert Camus, not only because of her poetry, but also her musical compositions, an aspect I believe is underrated when people talk about her. She has this amazing ability, album after album, of cutting through the bullshit that I absolutely love.

The ultimate test, IMO, is when a piece of art transcends the genre the artist is usually associated with to go beyond its boundaries, that simultaneously feeds my imagination and my brain, and moves my spirit. Besides Hejira, a few other examples of this in my musical discoveries have been Miles Davis's Bitches Brew, Björk's Vespertine, and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. All of these are musical poetry to my ears.

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

Edit:

Btw noumenon, have you seen the Joni M. dvd, Collectors Ed? If not, you must buy it 4 your collection.

I had to say that there are other songs on Maná's Unplugged concert that I love:

Vivir Sin Aire (To Live Without Air).

En El Muelle de San Blas (On the Wharf of San Blas).

Yes, my partner and I have both of them. The documentary Woman of Heart and Mind makes me teary-eyed everytime, LOL!

Though I read your entire post with great interest noumenon, it is listening to Bosillos that made me think more about my initial post.

I find the lyrics to the song philosophically interesting but musically inert in comparison to Rodríguez's work, some of which grabs me by the cajones with the opening phrase.

The mystical surrealism that permeates much of Latin culture - much represented by Gabriel García Márquez's book One Hundred Years of Solitude - is not in and of itself enough to inspire those same eternal themes of hopefulness that occur in this performance of Ojala.

The audience response to something so simple is breathtaking.

I don't think there is a good translation for the word in English. But the feeling is universal. You inspired me to do a little research on that enigmatic word, or phrase in its origianal form. It is a single verse of poetry that captures so much of Hispanic culture and history. I remember the feeling it invoked when I first heard it. Perhaps some poetry is not really translatable in word.

Duh! I would have to add Tracy Chapman to this thread!



Just a slight correction dahling:

Magical Realism.

...But yes, Magical Realism can be interpreted to be mystical & surreal!

Thanks for the link Dahling. I never finished 100 years so maybe I didn't get past the mystical surrealism to the magical realism. But I'm in questionably good company with this reviewer of another GGM book:I had no idea what "Rabelaisian" was, but I bet my girl Phyllis would fit the bill.

lol!

I thought that this was an interesting link that you might enjoy sil.

Very interesting article SCT. It once again makes me regret that modern tertiary education - and indeed all levels of education in the USA - tend to diminish the classical style of liberal arts for a more pragmatic focus on educating "workers" for industries.

Personally I think it would be better if real-world work experience could become an automatic part of mandatory universal education for those who are capable, even though work-study probably held me back in college. If everyone had to participate in it I think the system would be more fair and benefit all.

Back to the article; while reading it the thought occurred to me that "magical realism" appears to be an oxymoron. Can magic and reality co-exist. The tricks of a magician are "real" in the sense that they do not exceed the known laws of physics, just use them in unexpected ways.

Whereas "mystical surrealism", despite perhaps being redundant, has the advantage of being internally consistent. I haven't read enough of the genre to know which, if either, should be applicable. The only Spanish language novel I ever finished was Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, an extraordinary example of Latin culture which almost approaches free verse poetry rather than prose. It is magical, mystical, surreal and yet very real in its intent. So "go figure".

I think the notion of magical realism relates to the idea of the fusion of the 2, but not necessarily "magic" as you described. More like magical in the sense that it takes us to places beyond reality using, for ie, Greek, Roman, or pre-Colombian mythical stories. I think this quote best captures the genre:





Another great ie (a book I have read btw) is Carlos Fuente's Christopher Unborn. I think you'd really enjoy it. Also, the comments by the Amazon readers are interesting. What is fascinating about this book is that Fuentes (a former JFK Prof of Latin Amer Studies @ Harvard) wrote this book cuz of the terrible plight that the Mexican populace experienced after the devastating '85 earthquake in Mexico City. Basically, there was a total meltdown of the govt's response (think of the immediate aftermath of Katrina). He envisioned what the future of Mexico would be like. & what's scary is that much of it has come to pass, magical realism aside.

I'll look for Carlos Fuente's Christopher Unborn SCTrojan.

Back to poetry, of a sort.

The aria This Is Not About Alberto Gonzales sung by Mary Thorne in the opera The Gonzales Cantata being performed at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival should be an even hotter ticket than Michael Vick playing for the Eagles.

But it won't.

With magic realism, if compared to fantastic (not to be confused with "fantasy") literature, e.g., Jorge Luis Borges, the events combining magic and reality are to be narrated as if they were natural and expected. There's no element of surprise. In fantastic literature, it is the opposite: the fantastic element catches the reader off guard (or so my professors told me in college, LOL!).

García Márquez was very much influenced by the lesser known - but, in my opinion, greater - Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, who spoke in the late '40s of lo real maravilloso, marvelous reality, so similar to the concept of magic realism that some people can't differentiate between the two. When Carpentier was doing research for his novel El reino de este mundo (The Kingdom of This World), he observed that myth in the Caribbean was taken as real, and that reality became mythical, to a point where no one could tell where the one ended and the other began. Marvelous reality, Carpentier argued, is intrinsic to the Latin American experience because of our baroqueness. Think of it as American surrealism, though it is not quite that...

It would have been worth going just to hear him sing Unicornio live. But that is only a fraction of the genius Silvio Rodriguez brought to the USA after 30 years of embargo.

The rest of the tour.

Hi, I am here!

So hit us up with some of your poetry.