I will be writing a column on Length & Time in music, in each presenting an album and its strategies that pertain to addressing Length & Time.
What does it mean to be a woman? What did it mean to be a woman? Una Mujer? Une Femme?
That both the ancient Greeks and to Christianity, both so important to our modern world, believe that Pandora on one hand and Eve on the other opened a box, a door, to something terrible, something nothing like what living was, is exactly the issue at hand. However, to both, women are givers, and nurturers, of life. The issue is that the life that we speak of is not civil life but domestic life – to them women were born to serve and not to be free. To her civilization, who is a woman who sings songs that power may not like? Songs that she loves? Must she dare?
The same can be said about the cultures of pre-columbian tribes and of African tribes: though women were prominent in many, man sought to subject women to his will for the most part.
In 1980, Soledad Bravo released her boleros, turning the world to where she is the debonair Cuban male who holds a guitar and sings to passer-byes, sitting hearts on fire. In 1980, there were 9 more years until the Berlin Wall would fall. The world was it war in every society (the left vs. the right) and each society now counts its dead.
The album was named Boleros, simply. It was an act of love, but also an act of faith – faith in that those who surround her would want to feel her boleros. Bravo is best known for singing Hasta Siempre to the dead Che; her boleros were her sentiments boleros’ rich in purpose.
[editor’s note: The original album is out of print. A 3-CD set includes the boleros material: Boleros, Tangos y Algo Más]
Author: Adolf Alzuphar
