Álbum Blanco para Silvio Rodríguez’ (White Album for Silvio Rodríguez), an album made up of eleven previously unreleased songs by the Cuban singer-songwriter, created between the end of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, was presented on Monday in Havana.
This work gathers “dreams and songs that have been created more than fifty years ago and are no longer the exclusive property of their author,” according to its producer, Enrique Carballea, during the presentation, reported by the state-run Cuban News Agency (ACN).
Carballea said the album features orchestrations ranging from jazz to world music to American folk to psychedelic rock.
He also said that the songs are performed by Chilean Manuel García, among other singers, who gave his voice to the song ‘Las Nubes’ -orchestrated by Catalan Alfred Artigas- which has been circulating on digital platforms since the end of September.
Cuban artists such as Beatriz Márquez, Roly Berrio, Leonardo García and the recently deceased Eduardo Sosa, among others, participate in the album, licensed by Bis Music, a record company owned by local company Artex S.A.
The presentation coincides with Rodríguez’s tour of five Latin American countries, which began with a recent concert on the steps of the University of Havana.
Silvio Rodríguez and his influence
The Latin American tour began in late September in Chile, where the troubadour had not performed since 2018.
The tour continued in Argentina and Uruguay, and will continue to Peru and Colombia until early November.
Silvio Rodríguez, author of emblematic songs such as ‘Ojalá’, ‘Unicornio’ and ‘La Maza’, brings to these presentations his most recent album -‘Quería saber’- released in mid-2024 and in which he brings together songs composed between 2015 and 2019 with intimate and social lyrics, shod with the characteristic stamp of his voice and poetics.
Rodríguez, one of the founders of the Nueva Trova Cubana, participated in 1968 in the concert that marked the founding of that artistic movement, along with other musicians such as Pablo Milanés, Noel Nicola, Martín Rojas, Eduardo Ramos, Vicente Feliú and Pedro Luis Ferrer.
Since then, he has been one of the members of this collective with the greatest repercussion outside Cuba’s borders.
The Nueva Trova mixed the study of the popular roots of Cuban music with politicized lyrics. It is considered the continuation of earlier expressions of traditional trova and the songs of the fílin musical genre and became one of the most influential musical movements in Latin America in the second half of the 20th century, reported Agencia EFE.
Find out more at ‘QueOnnda.com’.
