Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I’d like to believe the same is true with music: that every shit song has an equal and opposite brilliant song, although the statistics will probably prove that the ratio is slightly skewed. So, as a counterweight to the Kesha song I wrote about, I’d like to write about a song I find simply stunning; ‘yo no tanto como el’ by Pedro Luis Ferrer.
The beauty of this song comes not only from Ferrer’s huge talent, his professional delivery, his emotional yet dignified sentiment (though all these factors are major considerations for me), but that the song is allowed to operate on a number of levels (to use that most worn of musical clichés). The apparent simplicity of the song allows listeners – and I don’t just think Cuban, or even Spanish speaking listeners – to engage with and find poignant meaning in the song.
A summary of song and performer perhaps may help here – the now ubiquitous ‘back story’. Ferrer is a Cuban songwriter who has been working since the 1960’s (effectively the life of the Cuban revolution). In the 1970’s and 80’s, he enjoyed fame and, if not fortune (a difficult thing to find in Cuba) then certainly artistic commendation. His songs were well known to many Cubans through their numerous television and radio broadcasts and Ferrer was entering the tightly guarded pantheon of ‘Great Cuban artists’. However, some of his more pointed, critical social commentaries began to attract the wrong kind of attention, and by the 1990’s, Ferrer was black listed by the government. His albums are now unavailable (legally at least) in Cuba, his songs never broadcast. This song, ‘yo no tanto como el’, I assume (it is not on an album, nor can I find a date for its ‘release’) must come from around the time of Ferrer’s personal censorship. It is, on the surface, a description of the ideological differences between Ferrer and his father. Yet there are an almost limitless number of avenues of personal interpretation open to the listener to explore, hidden within the simple, repeated words.
