Simon Diaz
Mis canciones / My songs

Since I am in a prolific period and feel like sharing knowledge, I have decided to talk about a musical alphabet that, I am sure, none of you knows. And if someone did know it, I would be delighted. Following a personal exploration of bossa nova inspired by the best artists who have interpreted it, I have decided to stay in South America to celebrate the musical genre that I enjoy most at those latitudes: the genuine musica llanera venezolana, which could comfortably be defined as the country of Venezuela, though far from the Yankee tradition.

Let's proceed in order and start with a necessary introduction that you can skip if you wish to move on to the next paragraph. Venezuela is a wonderful and fortunately rich country with contrasts not just of a social nature. A paradisiacal country where there is everything, from the rocky and snowy peaks of the last ramifications of the Andes - 5,000 meters - to the desert, from the Caribbean sea to the Amazon rainforest. There are cities, South American-style metropolitan areas, completely infested with high culture and slums, more tranquil towns, and small villages like ours, sleepy and characteristic because the people have skin almost red like coal, dried by the sun. It is here that Venezuela becomes truer and less Americanized. The heart of the country, however, presents lesser-known naturalistic aspects and the civilization in our own manner (there are even indigenous people there) that is most authentic and sincere down there. In this part of the country, called los llanos, there are vast flat plains of nothing where skinny and fat cows graze, followed as far as the eye can see by lean and sprightly dogs and men dressed in flannel shirts, cowboy hats, and jeans when possible. This part of Venezuela, rich in ranches, is the one that knows less of the wickedness and arrogance of the more developed areas of the country and is where the music I'm about to talk about was born.

Simon Diaz, revered in his homeland as Tio Simon (Uncle Simon), is a celebrity in Venezuela, a father figure for all the people who literally adore him. Those who disregard him are young bourgeois who consider his genre of music outdated and speak of it almost with embarrassment. And it is precisely for this reason that I have decided to delve into the serene and serene llanos to understand a bit more.

Venezuelan llanera music found its highest exponent in this man, able to gather fragments of a tradition of tonadas that had neither future nor points of contact with the rest of the world, stitch them together, and make it into a complete musical genre of national character, exportable to the point that names like Almodovar and Caetano Veloso have used his pieces. They have had the honor of sharing the stage with him, personalities of the caliber of Placido Domingo. The Gipsy Kings put on a show with "Bamboleo", an original and completely different piece by the Tio.

Today, he celebrates more than 60 years of career, as a successful and satisfied man, having hit the mark even in the U.S.A., where he is well-introduced by this collection Mis canciones in which his main successes are proudly displayed.

Let's examine them as much as possible under a microscope, starting with the contents. The music of Simon Diaz (which would be like saying, that of the entire genre which nonetheless has several other acclaimed authors) is popular music because it is made by the people. The themes are archaic and connected to the pastoral world of the tropics (hard to believe there is one there): the theft of a prodigious cow, the death of a loved one, love - always seen in a romantic or at least old-fashioned light - for the radiant country girl of the moment. Honesty of feelings and purity of intentions are the foundations of every llanera textual composition. It makes me think of fast and slow serenades, as our great-grandparents would have done at the beginning of the last century, generally sung by a monotone and upright male voice, with high and dry, self-assured and singsongy tones. To find useful descriptive hooks to make you understand, it's a bit like when the grouse sings its power in the henhouse. There is an anthropological matter, I imagine, linked to all this. It probably is a way to express one's feelings regarding important events in life, in an acted and masked manner. They are certainly feelings that are difficult to express otherwise for the shy inhabitants of the llanos. Themes and music are of a bucolic nature, as they are songs of shepherds distant kilometers and centuries apart, but they shouldn't make one think of an old and already buried musical genre. Indeed! Simon Diaz renders it to us in all its healthy modern musicality enriched by instruments that have been rarely seen here, if at all: the cuatro (four-string Andean guitar), local harps, bass/mandolin, percussion of all forms and types. Bold and brash, this music, with Diaz has lost the roughness of improvisation to become a musical product, can be seen and defined as the ideal meeting point between Andean music and salsa: sounds of the cordillera, Caribbean dance rhythm.

A music blessed by the moon and the sun, of clearly Latin origin, protagonist of the spring festivities of a country that gathers in the llanos to eat steaks, drink beer, and let loose in primordial and highly participatory dances.

Mis canciones is a happy and successful collection; it has everything you need to know and hear about this musical genre. I cannot but rate it with 5 stars. The rating would inexorably drop for individual works because ultimately the story is always the same: music that risks repeating itself too much and stories of other people's cows that you eventually get tired of. But the goodness remains of an ancestral way of making music that intrigues and opens the boundaries of a hidden part of the world, where one lives simply and transparently on what nature offers, in a symbiosis between man, animals, and environment well depicted by the blend of instruments that follow the common perception of time in those areas, tied to the rhythm of the seasons: sometimes you dance euphorically, sometimes you sing alone.

Glory to master Simon Diaz, noble interpreter of a genre that would otherwise have been lost. Singer and vox populi, strumming these that with a verbalfolk balancing act could be considered on par with Roman strums, he bravely carried forward his idea, also coming to write patriotic lyrics far from nationalism (note!).

Among the memorable tracks, I mention two: my dearly cherished "Mi querencia" and "Caballo viejo", a historical battle-horse of our interpreter.

Highly recommended for those who appreciate world music.