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Silvio Rodriguez  in Chile : the demand to free the Cuban Five multiplied in 30,000 Voices

CHILE , December, 2007.-  For more than two hours, in the open air of a splendid twilight of southern spring, 30,000 people listened to a 25-song set by Silvio Rodriguez in the city of Talca , located 300 kilometres south of Santiago de Chile.

On Sunday, the Cuban singer-songwriter and local residents sealed a commitment to the ethics of art, communicating through song and the most beautiful feelings of solidarity.

A few months before, Rodriguez had suspended a concert in the same city because of exorbitant ticket prices that prevented common people from attending his presentation.

Certain obscure interests tried to punish Silvio judicially for breach of contract but both at the legal and moral level the idea of sharing his art with the public in the open air triumphed and Silvio's offer to play free of charge for Talca residents found the support of a wide range of people in the community, as well as of the city authorities.

"This has been the largest, most moving, and culturally significant activity ever held here," Talca Mayor Patricio Herrera told Granma newspaper at the end of the concert.

Shortly before, on Sunday morning, the Silvio Rodríguez Cultural Center for the promotion of popular cultures was inaugurated in a modest local school. The author of Te doy una canción said he was pleasantly surprised at the gesture. "In Cuba , we are not used to naming things or places after people who are still alive," he said while visiting the center, accompanied by Cuban Ambassador to Chile Giraldo Mazola, Herrera, and the school's director, Juan Carlos Hernandez.

THE CUBAN FIVE PRESENT

Exactly at 7:00 p.m. Sunday, Silvio went on stage to join the members of the Trovarroco Trio (Mayquel Elizalde, Rachid Lopez and Cesar Vacaro), percussionist Oliver Valdes, and flautist and clarinettist Niurka Gonzalez Nunez). The concert was produced by Ana Lourdes Martinez, while Jerzy Belc was in charge of sound.

El Necio was heard with the strength of someone proclaiming his poetic art, followed by other Silvio songs both old and new.

Halfway through the concert, Silvio read fragments of a message sent by US actor Danny Glover to professors and students of a Cuban university, to explain the terrible injustice his government was committing against Five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters -Gerardo, Ramon, Antonio, Fernando and Rene- by keeping them incarcerated. After reading the message, he dedicated his ballad Dulce Abismo to these five men.

There were other magical moments such as when Silvio spoke about his very close friend and companion from the Nueva Trova Movement, the late singer and composer Noel Nicola. He said Noel was "perhaps listening to us from a cloud, but today the sky is cloudless;" then, while singing Te Perdono, a comet flew through the canopy of heaven.

People were also treated to the new vitality of Dias y Flores, accompanied by the improvisations of Rachid, Mayquel and Cesar, recreating Cuban rural folklore; and an invocation of Che Guevara through the song America, te hablo de Ernesto, which Silvio had begun to compose in Chile many years ago.

Silvio also moved the crowd with references to Violeta Parra in an extraordinary song entitled Quién fuera and a composition about the late President Salvador Allende, Cita con ángeles.