by Tania Flores
The words and melodies of Facundo Cabral have haunted me for almost a year now, surging and welling up in me on days when I can feel wistfulness in my muscles and the folds of my skin tingle with the touch of fabric or the cool wooden surface of my desk. I could not stop listening to “No soy de aquí, ni soy de allá” after discovering this recording, could not help but sink into the song, the back of my throat prickling.
Cabral’s words, the tension between the verses of his songs, have the capacity to evoke visceral responses; Cabral touched on what was palpable, present, and sensory, the details that constitute what is pleasurable in life. His music articulated a simple and abiding love of life, a love of the experience of being human, as well as distaste for the excess and infrastructure and false needs that distance us from that experience.