Silvio Rodriguez - Rodriguez (CD)

All Music Guide

When Ry Cooder went to Cuba in 1996 in search of the “deeply funky" rhythms the island had been famous for at midcenturydanzón, bolero, rumba, sonthe resulting album, The Buena Vista Social Club, made Grammywinning, arenapacking superstars of its octogenarian musicians, and cleared the way to international airplay and success for dozens of others. And so it came to pass that northern Europeans flocked to salsa classes, that bartenders in the Midwest began serving up mojitos, that Celia Cruz received a queen's burial; yet the international reputation of the unassuming man who is arguably the island's most influential living recording artist failed to profit much at all from these high years of Cubanismo. Silvio Rodriguez plays the guitar and sings with the voice of one of its own high strings, pulled perhaps a little tight. Melancholy, sardonic, tender or bemused, his is an organic music, starting with a spare, oddly syncopated bass line, gaining chords and momentum with each goround. I...t's a ballad that arrives halfremembered from a bustling coffee house, hemmed in by a crowd of wouldbe poets, intellectuals, and revolutionaries. You sing along before you even know the words.Rodriguez is a trovador, a folk singer/balladeer. Much has been made of the Nueva Trova movement's leftist political agenda, yet the songs on this acoustic selftitled release are for the most part lullabies and gentlest love songs, full of barnacles and constellations and vast Whitmanesque “Song of Myself" lyrical gestures. Recorded between 1992 and 1994 in Havana and dedicated to Rodriguez's father, who died during this time, it is the artist's most personal and accessible effort, his Ars Poetica. Read more Less