Pablo’s Live Concert, and then, of course, to love…

I spent all my student years dreaming about such “Proposals.” When I listen to all of them, with the special sound of Los Van Van, these proposals cheer me up. I would love my children to receive and propose such a wonderful plan: Silvio’s live concert or something similar, and then, of course, to love…”

Now that my children enter their teens, I have played for them that song that reads: “Love me without fear that I have to promise loyalty to my way of being…” I think I rather sing it again and again to myself as an antidote to that forgetfulness parents sometimes experience when we get old and, as Pablo said: “I cannot show love like before.”

In my favor, I have used a lot of convincing reasons: “Let me wake you up with a kiss amid this green morning waiting for you…” And in recent years, when age and overweight take their toll, against my own insecurity and fears, I have a spell: “love me the way I am (…) I want to anchor in your soul.”

I am a fan of Sabina. I love even the huskiness of that Andalucian voice, which prevents him to be Frank Sinatra. However, when La Magdalena asks for a shot in the voice of Pablo Milanés, I would invite her to not only one, but two, three, and even four shots so I can continue enjoying his voice.

Following my path of confessions, I confess (if you excuse my repetition) that if I had to choose, in my early years as a student, a song for a revolutionary activity, I always chose Pablo’s. Silvio was, is, and will be my favorite among all singer-songwriters. But as a poet, when it came to revolutionary slogans, I rather chose Pablo. For instance:

Bolivar launched a star that together with Martí shone

Fidel dignified it to walk around these lands.

If what he meant to say was something very different…If he made a U-turn because of life…If the songs he used to sing are not worthy anymore, well, I am still grateful.

“I love this island,” with all my woman, mother soul (that is the most important thing), and with my word, and my life, hard and happy at the same time, I do not really want to “say other things, worthier, prettier…”

And when it comes the time to ask myself “What green will dazzle you, what earth with its humidity, its smells, its humility, are you going to miss? (…) What kind of freedom will they give you? I stubbornly repeat to myself, the same answer Pablo wrote: I do not care if others, and even him, switched sides… “I rather treasure all those stuff, small, simple, I rather treasure those.”

Dear Pablo: I will be “loyal to you” and not as something personal, but “your story is just one chapter within a greater story where the people and men are united in a voice.”

I am happy you are back. I am happy you sing again. I will not go to the Sports City because that song “We'd better sink into the sea before betraying the glory that has been lived” was too important for me, and I hoped that these days, even though these have not been “glorious days,” you would be close enough to applaud our Soberana and our Abdala, to sing, with courage, to everything we lack, and to denounce again what is taken away from us.

I rather believe in your love and the love of this island. Dear Pablo, it is a tough love, but it is love anyway. And that is the most powerful energy, which is not produced or destroyed: it is actually transformed.

“We are not God, let’s not make the same mistake twice.” Pablo is coming, the founder of the New Trova Movement. The author of songs such as Yolanda, Para Vivir, El Breve Espacio…Pablo Milanes, one of the greatest Singer-songwriters in Latin America and also, a singer of the Revolution, even though he seems to forget it once in a while. The songs are there to read… “Where they'll be, on the side of my skin I keep them well and sometimes they will sprout.”

Pablo is here to sing (I hope so); thousands of people will go to listen to him and then, of course, to love…

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff