ojalá

ojalá : favi, vocals & joe garcia, guitar (original, silvio rodríguez)



i recently came across this version of ojalá and found it very lovely. this young vocalist, favi, lends a sort of halting urgency to her recording of this song that complements the music & letras so well. kind of reminds me of some of the live silvio recordings, beautiful and oblique, with an overwhelming sense of longing and lament.

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probably the most collectively adored of all silvio rodríguez songs ojalá is a love song, written for his first love, several years after they parted. they had met when he was 18, and she introduced him to many new things, including the work of leftist peruvian writer césar vallejo. eventually she had to move away for her studies, and so they called it off. their relationship had a profound enduring affect on him, and he has called her the inspiration for several songs.

this is how he describes ojalá:

... se fue a su pueblo Camagüey, a estudiar ... y yo me quedé solo aquí en La Habana, totalmente desolado. Pasaron los años y el recuerdo de aquel amor tan bonito, tan productivo, tan útil (ojo, no confundir con utilitario), enriquecedor, de aporte a uno... pues, estaba obsesionado yo con esa idea. Y porque fue un amor frustrado, tronchado por las circunstancias, por la vida, no fue una cosa que se agotara, pues se me quedó un poco como un fantasma y por eso compuse esta canción en un momento quizás de delirio, de arrebato, de sentimiento un poco desmesurado: ojalá esto, ojalá lo otro...

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she left to her town, to camagüey, to study ... and i was left here alone in havana, completely devastated. the years passed and the memory of that love, so beautiful, so productive and useful (careful, not to be confused with utilitarian), that enriches and makes one better... well, i became obsessed with that idea. and because it was a frustrated love, cut short because of the circumstances of life, it wasn't something that had exhausted itself, well what i was left with was a bit of a ghost and so i composed this song in a moment of very heightened sentiments, perhaps a fit of delirium: ojalá this, ojalá that...

[the word ojala comes from inshallah and means god-willing or similar, that something wished for will occur]

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f-a-v-i = fuego. agua. viento. ira por la tierra robada / fire. water. wind. rage for the stolen land

éso! gracias, compañerita. looking forward to hearing more...