Portrait of Pablo Milanés through his 10 most decisive songs

The overwhelming record production of Pablo Milanés, who died this Tuesday in Madrid, deals with almost fifty titles —including shared albums and live recordings— and several hundred compositions of his own authorship, often in lyrics and music, and sometimes with verses. borrowed from great poets.

But, without underestimating any of his periods, it seems clear that the core of his repertoire is concentrated in the first decade of recorded activity, between 1975 and 1984, an enormously fertile, inspired and prolific period, in which he had time to deliver a dozen albums.

All these compositions ended up being fixed forever in the memory of the fans when in 1985 the famous

an LP produced and sponsored by Víctor Manuel that would open the doors of the Spanish market with all honors thanks to its most illustrious cast of guests: from Ana Belén to Serrat, Aute, Silvio Rodríguez, Mercedes Sosa, Miguel Ríos, Amaya or Chico Buarque.

Many already knew him before, but that was the great turning point, his endorsement among the aristocracy of the Ibero-American songwriter.

At first she was horrified by the sound of him, more European and modernized;

A few days later, he called Víctor Manuel again to apologize and tell him that he loved the new vitality with which he had managed to spice up the originals.

In fact, the idea would be reformulated 17 years later, in 2002, with

another duet album, although this time with allies exclusively from the other shore of the ocean.

More information

Pablo Milanés, great voice of Ibero-American music, dies at 79

My verse is like a dagger

(

, 1975)

It is curious that a manual singer-songwriter like Milanés inaugurated his discography with a monographic work dedicated to someone else's collection of poems.

But in that case, of course, no figure could be as paradigmatic as that of José Martí, the great nineteenth-century ideologue of the Cuban Revolutionary Party in the uprising against Spanish colonialism.

“I know of a deep sorrow / among the sorrows without names / The slavery of men / is the great sorrow of the world!” The singer cried in his first indispensable song.

And in its most primitive vindication of poetry as a weapon (or dagger) to revive consciences.

Life is worthless

(From

, 1976)

The true great emergence of Milanés as a troubadour armed with lyrics, voice and music comes with his second LP, perhaps the most plethoric and defining of his career.

Almost everything that happens in it has transcended the years and lives on in the collective memory, surely even more so because of the desolate aftertaste left by his departure.

Nothing like standing up to melancholy with this manifesto in favor of a committed song, in the antipodes of impassive gazes.

Because "Life is worthless / when others are killing themselves / and I'm still here singing / as if nothing happened".

To live

(From

, 1976)

Milanés was immense in the art of the love song, an unavoidable chapter for any composer, but one in which it is difficult not to fall into excessively busy clichés and casuistries.

Somehow, the Cuban wanted to combat this canon by dedicating his first capital ballad, a piece of beautiful melody, to the gall of a faded love: “And although crying is bitter, think of the years / that you have to live / May my pain It is not minor and the worst thing / is that I can no longer feel ”.

The album credits specify that the lyrics date back to 1967, coinciding with his first musical steps.

I will step on the streets again

(From

, 1976)

Pinochet's savage coup d'état in September 1973, which silenced with blood and fire that Chilean democratic spring symbolized by Salvador Allende, left a deep wound in the heart of Milanés, who had always looked with admiration towards the Palacio de la Moneda.

On the same album that already included an emotional tribute to the fallen (To Salvador Allende, in his fight for life) this call to hope slipped, to the recovery of the liberties of the brotherly people: "I will step on the streets again / of what was bloody Santiago / and in a beautiful liberated square / I will stop to cry for the absent”.

Unfortunately, it would still take the Chilean people many years, until 1990, to evict the bloodthirsty general, thanks to a struggle from the humblest classes to which Milanés would dedicate an entire album:

(1980).

Pablo Milanés, during a performance in November 1987. The singer-songwriter died this Tuesday morning in Madrid at the age of 79, after his state of health worsened due to an oncological disease.Bernardo Pérez

From the left, Caco Senante, Pablo Milanés and Joaquín Sabina, during the presentation of the album 'Igual que ayer' in Madrid in April 1995. Milanés is one of the great Cuban voices of all time, the creator of unforgettable love songs like 'Yolanda', 'Love me as I am' or 'El brief espacio en que no está', which are already hymns;

a musician admired and loved by his compatriots and also by important artists from all over who made his lyrics their own and called him, simply and affectionately, Pablo, or Pablito.

Milanés set to music at a very young age the verses of Nicolás Guillén and José Martí (nothing less) and was a prominent pillar and founder of the Cuban Nueva Trova movement, which dazzled the world in the seventies, and in which he did not like to be pigeonholed, because his sensitivity and his work went much further.

In the image, the artist, photographed in Madrid in April 1994. Santi Burgos

Performance by Pablo Milanés and Víctor Manuel in the Las Ventas bullring in Madrid, in September 1995. The singer-songwriter was also the brilliant cultivator of 'filin' (from 'feeling', feeling), bolero and traditional music Cuban, the one who first rescued old troubadours from oblivion, such as Compay Segundo, and served as a bridge in his country between generations and styles, recognized for his talent as one of the great singer-songwriters in the Spanish language.Santi Burgos

Milanés (Bayamo, 1943) had been receiving medical treatment in Spain for a few years, where he lived with his family.

The Cuban artist leaves a remarkable legacy of formidable songs and close to 60 albums that place him among the indispensable and most universal names in Ibero-American music.

In the image, a performance by Milanés in Malaga in July 1993. Julián Rojas

Joaquín Sabina and Pablo Milanés pose together in the Sala Caracol in Madrid in September 1997. The beauty of his privileged voice and his gift for interpretation, which allowed him to reach ranges where most did not reach, together with his poetic way of saying , of apparent simplicity, but charged with a deep sensitivity that touched the soul regardless of the reason that inspired it, marked generations of Cubans and Latin Americans.Santi Burgos

The singer-songwriter poses during an interview in Madrid, in July 2003. His music also had strong roots in Spain, where he was well known, and even in the most remote town where he performed, young people, mid-time and older people knew his lyrics.

Joan Manuel Serrat, Joaquín Sabina, Luis Eduardo Aute, Ana Belén or Víctor Manuel are some of the Spanish artists who recorded his songs and collaborated with him.

santi burgos

On his continent, figures like Chico Buarque, Gal Costa, Armando Manzanero, Mercedes Sosa, Fito Páez, or salseros like Andy Montañez or Gilberto Santa Rosa, among many others, were among his devotees and did the same.

In the image, the Cuban musician, photographed in a hotel in Madrid in July 2003. Santi Burgos

Pablo Milanés sings with his daughter, Suylen, during a concert at the National Theater of Cuba, on December 28, 2005, in Havana.

Milanés was awarded the 2005 Cuban National Music Award. Alejandro Ernesto (EFE)

The Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez (left), after giving Pablo Milanés the Haydee Santamaría medal, awarded by the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba, in March 2007, in Havana. Alejandro Ernesto (EFE)

Pablo Milanés, pictured in July 2008. In addition to being a musician, Pablo Milanés was above all 100 percent Cuban and a citizen, and his committed positions connected him even more with that public that adored him and that for him was his reason for being.Bernardo perez

The singer-songwriter, during a concert in Havana (Cuba) in August 2008. Claudia Daut (REUTERS)

When in the days before his illness worsened, Orthodox from here and there criticized him as a "counterrevolutionary", the Cubans came out in a rush to defend him: Pablo is Cuba, they said en masse.

In the image, Milanés, in July 2015. Carlos Rosillo

Milanés photographed at his home in December 2015. The singer-songwriter moved to Spain several years ago to receive medical treatment, although he never forgot his people and returned whenever he could to sing and see his friends.

He had a transplanted kidney, donated to him by his wife, Nancy Pérez Rey, Galician and mother of his last two children, Pablito and Rosa.Uly Martín

Víctor Manuel kisses Pablo Milanés, during the concert of the La Mar de Músicas Festival, in Cartagena (Murcia) in July 2017. Last summer, already very ill, he wanted to travel to the Island with his family to offer his audience a concert memorable that it was a declaration of love, and a farewell.

Marcial Guillén ((EPA) EFE)

I don't ask you

(From

, 1978)

It was another quintessential album:

o

were among its grooves.

But on this third album, one of his great canonical pieces stands out, a call to the intensification of love in which his sharp vocal register stands out, the commitment to the stanzas that serve as a chorus —a frequent trait in the author— or some more detailed and sophisticated arrangements than before, with the unusual presence of the trumpet and harpsichord on the menu.

Song (In what a quiet way)

(From

, 1981)

In his album signed as a duet with the Venezuelan Lilia Vera, another standard-bearer of the protest song, this precious son immediately stood out around some verses by his admired Nicolás Guillén, poet and revolutionary from Camagüey who always strove to give a voice to the population Islander of African descent.

The piece, for once almost danceable, is adorablely tender (“In what quiet way / you enter me smiling / as if it were / spring / Me, dying”) and anticipates a monographic album,

, just a year later.

In addition, she was incorporated with enormous success into the repertoires of Víctor and Ana or Chico Buarque (adapted to Portuguese:

), and later also that of Soledad Villamil, the actress of

.

Yolanda

(From

, 1982)

As much as he has sung to political and social issues of enormous importance, the memory of Milanés will live forever linked to this eternal page, the mother of all love songs.

The muse and inspirer of those unforgettable verses (“If you missed me, I'm not going to die / if I have to die, I want it to be with you”) was Yolanda Benet, mother of singer Lynn Milanés and two other daughters in common, Lyam and Suylén, the latter deceased in February.

Benet had met the singer at the end of 1968, when she was working at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) and was looking for a composer to put music to the film

.

The crush was so withering that Yolanda interceded so that Pablo could take on the task, despite being just then doing military service.

i love this island

(From

, 1982)

An idyllic vision of Havana and island life, the proud proclamation of a Cuban who, beyond discrepancies and vicissitudes, never renounced his homeland.

There are several examples of this filiation with hardly any fissures, but perhaps none as convincing as this ode in which Cuba is a habitat of serenity in the face of the American hustle and bustle: "Don't talk to me about the continent / it's already crowded / You look everywhere / and he sees it full of people”.

poor singer

(From

, 1984)

Milanés has been forging an increasingly transnational popularity, as evidenced, without going any further, by his memorable visits to Brazilian stages, but he is horrified by the ghosts of conformism, gentrification and an accommodating spirit.

That is why he prefers to shake them off publicly with a call for renewed commitments that must always guide the troubadour's efforts: "Poor singer that one day history / erases him without the glory / of having touched thorns."

The brief space in which you are not

(From

1984)

The other great love song, with capital lyrics, in the catalogue.

And the only one that today can compete with

—even if it is at a certain distance— in number of listeners on digital platforms.

Love is not as impulsive and flawless as in its flagship song, but it seems that the pendulous and somewhat unpredictable character of the muse ends up becoming an additional attraction for the poet: "It is usually violent and tender / it does not speak of eternal unions / more he surrenders as if there were / only one day to love ”.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber