By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on July 4, 2024 from Havana
Marta Valdés in concert 2014. photo: Irene Pérez/ Cubadebate.
Since her first song, Palabras ( 1955), interpreted by some of the most talented voices in Latin American music, from Bola de Nieve to Elena Burke, Miriam Ramos and Martirio, as well as dozens of other great boleristas, Marta stood out for her ability to connect with people’s most intimate feelings.
Almost 70 years after those Palabras (words) that immense audience has become a homeland. In an intergenerational place that unites listeners of all ages and musicians. Without going any further, like the title of another song by Marta, just a few days ago the young guitarist Dayron Ortiz presented his album Mucho más que palabras, with 10 songs by Valdés.
While very young, she reached unimaginable heights as a lyricist, unpublished, with exceptional ability to handle the cultured and popular language, which is also reflected in her essayistic work, in her articles and even in her production for the web. She kept a column in Cubadebate, which she accompanied with the music that corresponded to each review and eventually appeared with photos that she herself took with her phone.
For such versatility it is necessary to have read what Marta has read and, of course, to have the head and the unique sensitivity that she has. If anyone wants to write songs in our language, they should certainly study the creations of Marta Valdés.
Ethics fits within the word aesthetics, as she has demonstrated in her work. It is impossible to separate the Marta Valdés person from the song or the published page, because it is a dialectic unity difficult to find in other territories of culture. Marta Valdés is what she sings and what she says, but she is also silence.
There is silent music in each of her songs. It is not the music of silence, but the silence itself making itself felt, to give way to the words, the melody, the harmony and the sonority, which obey the story of each song. Marta knows how to couple the sounds, which are united by the root and not by the side, as José Ortega y Gasset said about words.
The secret of her originality, the reason of her poetics and the explanation of her permanent modernity is to be found in her Cuban identity, in her loyalty to herself, in the dignity of the artist and in that particular homeland called Marta Valdés. Coherence of a life that reaches the age of 90 and is expressed in Yo me quedo, composed in 1966, and one of my favorites:
“Like a fern attached to the balcony / I stay / Like the canary and the old armchair / I stay / because I want to look as I never looked, / because I want to sing / as I never in life sang, / to the girl / to the soldier / to gossipers and lovers / and that nobody pretends to teach me if the way is to stay or to leave / where I am.”
Source: Cubaperiodista translation Resumen Latinoamericano-English