The brief space in which it is not: Goodbye to Pablo Milanés

“I met him in 1967 in a television studio in Havana. (…) I had already heard about his things and he about mine, being a fabulous meeting ”counted one. “I had started making songs while in the army, and when I was demobilized I met him. They had told me a lot about him, that when I met him I would find my other half, and I think it was true.”, counted the other. They met in 1967, when the former was 24 years old and the latter was barely 21. Both remembered that it was Omara Portuondo, Cuba’s light turned bolero, the alchemist who brought both elements together because she understood, from the moment she contemplated their talents, that In those voices and guitars, a mixture of art, physics or chemistry coexisted, as well as a certain mysticism, as the manuals of the aforementioned medieval protoscience, which has a maximum law, dictate: “Man cannot obtain anything without first giving something in return. To create, something of equal value must be given in return.. That was how they met for the first time. Pablo Milanes and Silvio Rodriguez.

The first showed his satisfaction for that crossing, “Not only because of the confrontation we had and the admiration we lavished on each other that afternoon, but also because of the similarity of personalities, objectives and ideas, and above all because of the ideological coincidences and in terms of what could be done with the song in Cuban popular culture”. Silvio, for his part, remembered it like this: “Omara told me to wait a moment, that Pablo would arrive. The fact is that when he arrived he left us alone in the studio and we began to sing songs to each other for more than an hour. A kind of mutual infatuation ensued. It seemed to me that I had just broken the solitude in which I found myself in the whole set up of professional music. I discovered a sensitivity very close to mine in the way of approaching things”.

That year ended up being decisive for his musical future. Children of a revolutionary period, the soundtrack of their lives was a mixture of the traditional music of the island, represented by the old trovero Sindo Garay, El Trío Matamoros, María Teresa Vera or Marta Valdés, with the American and British influence of Woody. Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Báez, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, the Rolling Stones, The Who or the Animals. “At first not everyone understood what we wanted to do. They were songs that for one were too critical, for others too revolutionary, and for others too novel.Pablo once remembered. Although their divergent positions towards the Castro regime ended up distancing them, their names are inseparable when looking back and referring to what we call “Trova”, “New Song” or “Protest Song”. They were years of dreams, transformations and idealism in which his songs became banners. Today they are caresses from a past that can always be a better future.

After a career of more than 55 years, more than 40 albums and an endless list of awards and recognitions -including a Latin Grammy for musical excellence- the author of hymns such as “La vida no vale nada”, “Cuánto gané, cuánto perdí ”, “I will step on the streets again”, “Yolanda”, “The brief space in which you are not” or “I do not ask you” succumbed yesterday in Madrid to an oncohematological disease at the age of 79, without fulfilling the desire that he confessed to him to this journalist in the interview he gave him almost 6 years ago, on his last visit to Peru: “If you asked me how I want to die, I would tell you on stage. Although for many it may be a common place, I think it is a very real and positive thing for all the artists who have stayed alive thanks to public favor.”.