{"id":8235,"date":"2021-06-02T00:00:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-02T04:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/?p=8235"},"modified":"2022-03-22T17:55:48","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T21:55:48","slug":"el-disco-rayado-vendiendolo-todo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazineampm.com\/en\/el-disco-rayado-vendiendolo-todo\/","title":{"rendered":"selling it all"},"content":{"rendered":"

One day Vanito Brown attends a party. Lots of people, lots of cheap alcohol, lots of noise. "There is salsa, AIDS, drugs, rap and rock and roll," he says. (Notice how the author of divine script<\/em> dodge the clich\u00e9 and, instead of using the word sex<\/em>, in which he surely thought \u2014because the brain is lazy and will always pull towards the common place\u2014, he replaces it with AIDS, a semantic qualification that immediately gives the print that new, tremendous force). At some point, perhaps in the middle of a conversation, a dance, or while singing something, Vanito, an observer with a professional license, saw this at the party: \u201cThere is an empty cross in the middle of the room \/ but the same path in every heart \u201d. It is that of the images that strike down, but so much so that you want to tattoo them next week. It fulminates because it describes, based on a specific reason, and with remote communication tools \u2014because they are neither from the past, nor from the present, nor from the future\u2014, the spirit of a time and a place, which is the abbreviated form in which they date the events for the record of all time. \u201cAn empty cross\u201d, ladies and gentlemen. "An empty cross in the middle of the room." Welcome to Havana. Welcome to the '90s.<\/p>\n

I underline this line because it's the one I like the most, but the whole album does that. The line belongs to the second cut, Light (And it's not the '70s)<\/em> \u2014a perfect work, because I don't know what more can be asked of a song\u2014, and the album was Lucha Almada's only record adventure, selling it all<\/em>, published by Bis Music in 1995. That same year another milestone in Cuban musical history came out: the emblematic Como los peces <\/em>(BMG\/Ariola), by Carlos Varela. With the advantage of saying this almost 30 years later, I have no doubt that if I am in the store and I only have enough to buy one, I will go with selling it all <\/em>home, very happy.<\/p>\n

I know that Como los peces <\/em>it is the fetish-album of the decade in Cuba (at least within what we agree to call author song), and that consideration was well earned; a work that, at this or that moment in the lives of all of us who love this type of music, has been irreplaceable. However, if we consume culture with a historical perspective (which is how I think it should be done, because if not, it's not funny), it's a bit strange to sit down and listen to the fable of the '90s narrated by Varela, when there were more newer, newer modes, newer timbres, counting the same. Be careful, Vanito is only four years younger than El Gnomo, but when to understand the development of art we use the metaphor of generations (which is very useful, but that does not stop it from being a metaphor, a rather didactic resource) , dates of birth are only one of the variables, and not the most important. Although Vanito Brown and Carlos Varela belong, perhaps, to the same demographic cohort, they have very different sensibilities, which made the author of Hab\u00e1name <\/em>get together with Frank Delgado and the Havana in full color <\/em>with Boris Larramendi. That is also why one uses the trope of the fish to indicate silence and resignation, and another "a love sleeping calmly, (...) hungry in the depths".<\/p>\n

Also read<\/span>\"Dise\u00f1o:<\/picture>
Columns<\/span>

Clouds<\/a><\/h3>Carlos M. Merida<\/a><\/span>13.10.2020<\/span><\/section><\/section>\n

No other album of the '90s has the documentary vocation of selling it all<\/em>, none narrates with that desire to narrate. It's as if Vanito and Alejandro Guti\u00e9rrez wanted to say it all at once, because they didn't know when another recording opportunity would present itself. There is no other record that better says the most important word of the decade, the word failure<\/em>. When Vanito exclaims: \u201cThe century is ending and I have sunstroke\u201d he is saying \u201cThe era is giving birth to a heart\u201d, but the other way around. The failure (of the Revolution as a social project) is the central thematic block of selling it all<\/em>. Most of the songs connect with this idea, even love songs like wanting you to feel good<\/em>, where at the beginning we clearly identify that unnatural disposition of the mind that consists of surrendering completely to reality, and let it decide, because simply, nothing else can be done, very common in Cuba from the '90s: "I notice you altered, is it the same problem? \/ Do not make him any more coconut, that matter has no remedy\u201d.<\/p>\n