Pablo Milanés: rare unrepeatable bird

A singer has not died;

A bird has become extinct, a rare Latin American bird that will never be repeated.

His singing was not only the emanation of privileged vocal cords, it was the expression of a collective heart.

Pablo Milanés not only sang about himself, the color and essence of his singing contained the plumage of an entire generation.

In his compositions, in that voice of astonishing registers, we Latin Americans of that time believed we felt what we imagined would be the future of a Latin America that had awakened to find itself, to recover its dignity, its potential and leave a luminous imprint on the world.

His music spoke to an emotion that, beyond the fights, deaths and rifles of that time, appealed to tenderness, to that part that wanted change to go beyond laws and the economy.

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Burning chapel by Pablo Milanés: "He was a machine for making perfect songs", sums up Fito Páez

The last time I hugged him was in Los Angeles at a concert he gave at the Conga Room sometime in the first decade of the two thousand.

Neither he nor I were the same anymore.

I saw him tired—he was already sick—but we recognized each other.

Although we had received a lot of water on our inner fires, no one could, as a popular saying goes that I love, "take away our dance."

It was during the two months that I spent in Cuba as a jury for the Casa de las Américas Award in 1981, when I met Pablo.

He and another group of Cuban poets, we were all young: Reyna María Rodríguez, Osvaldo Sánchez, Senel Paz, Nancy Morejón, Daína Chaviano and forgive those I did not name... they took it upon themselves to celebrate me and celebrate together the new Nicaraguan revolution, his music and his poetry.

Pablo hummed in some bar, laughing, “I love this island, I drink the Caribbean”, which was the beer he drank.

We went to Eliseo Diego's house one unforgettable afternoon and he introduced me to Rapi Diego, a filmmaker and great friend of his, now deceased, and Eliseo, his father, the great poet whose serene stillness impressed me.

In his broken-down car,

Pablo knew who he was, but he was bigger than his fame.

This did not prevent him from being, above all, an earthy character, kind above all things, deep in his love for the history of his country, with everything and his mistakes.

He told me of the terrible period in the 1960s when he and many others were locked up in a camp, with a Stalinist mentality, to “re-educate” them.

For him, Cuba was the flesh and blood of his people and, therefore, he did not deify what was done there, nor who did it.

He was clearly aware that this revolution, like ours, was a human adventure with its lighthouses and shipwrecks.

Neither he nor I imagined then hearing the timbers creak from so much sinking.

Some time after my stay in Cuba, Pablito came to Managua to give a concert at the González theater, a jewel theater during the Somocismo, which, already half decadent in its threadbare seats, still hosted great events in the 1980s. He invited me to accompany him to one of his essays.

I remember the stage in darkness, the instruments and equipment still in disarray and him testing microphones, looking for a chair, in that revelry atmosphere that rehearsals usually are.

I will never forget his playful smile when he began to sing the famous

, substituting that name for mine.

Gioconda for Yolanda.

The complicit musicians and Pablo enjoyed seeing my “fan” face who couldn't (and still can't) believe his luck.

Pablo's music is like him, there is nothing in it that does not correspond to that unique person, who, because he is, left us recorded, and not to forget, the soundtrack of a hope and a spirit that will continue to tear our hearts. so that you never stop singing, nor hope against all hope.

Hail Pablito!

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