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Format: MP3
Length: 30 min.
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Maria Volonte became a tango singer in the early 80s, almost by accident. Currently she is one of the best known tango singers in Argentina: in 2007 she was inducted into Tango Hall of Fame. Her previous album Fuimos was awarded Gardel Prize and nominated for Latin Grammy in USA. Currently she divides her residence between Buenos Aires and San Francisco.
Interview was recorded via phone on October 3, 2008.
Few Argentine inventions have expressed and defined us to the world with such clarity as tango. Like other music that I discovered back then, its words and melodies have cradled me since my childhood.
Even so, it was only as I began to live and love that I began to understand the secret wisdom and profound revelations within tango. In this curious blend of unmistakable melodies, romantic verses and ferocious ironies, are mixed truths both sweet and cruel, essential keys to our identity as a country: our hybrid origins, our obvious melancholy, our generosity at the moment of surrender, the sharp intelligence, the creative fervor.
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Sudestada
I live in a house that looks to the river.
Amid fiery suns and icy moons, amid furies of waves and serene afternoons, I learned to live with storms, those that came from outside my window and those that seethed within me. I discovered happily and painfully the eternal ebb and flow that governs everything. I learned to open my arms to the one who came from the river and to open them again when it was time to let him go.
Water, wind and sky, like life itself, brought me things and took them away. In the end they were far more generous with me than cruel. No matter how much the storms shook my house, I always had the sanctuary of a song.
All I have seen, all I dreamed, all I lived, all I saved and all I lost, resides in these beloved songs. Looking to the river, I offer them to you with my soul and my voice.
1. María (4:52)
(Aníbal Troilo; Cátulo Castillo)
Tango, 1945
Your name was Maria
Perhaps you were the echo of a forgotten song
But a long, long time ago
You were deeply mine
On a sad landscape
Exhausted by love
Autumn brought you
Your poor little hat and your worn brown overcoat
Soaked in agony
You were like the street of melancholy
Raining in my heart
Maria
In the shadows of my apartment
It is you footsteps that return
Maria
It is your voice, small and sad
On the day you said
there is nothing left between us
Maria
The most deeply mine
The one beyond reach
If only you would return one morning
Along the streets of farewell
Your absent eyes were ports
That tended your horizons full of dreams
And the silence of flowers
But your good hands
Stained by love
Came back to calm my fever
Autumn brought you
Your name was Maria
And I never knew anything
Of your unhappy end
If you were like the landscape of melancholy
That rained and rained on the grey streets
2. Parte del Juego (3:29)
(composed by María Volonté)
Your love
Makes me feel more alive each day
Even if I die every time that you leave
Fear is part of the game of loving again
Dreaming again
And letting that desire fly again
Your love
Cures the wounds of my solitude
No matter if they star bleeding
When you go away
Fear is part of the game of loving again
Dreaming again
And letting that desire fly again
3. Pequeña (Little One) (3:52)
(music: Osmar Maderna; lyrics: Homero Expósito)
Waltz
Where the river ends and the moon begins
Where no one has reached never will
Where the flowering verses play by my side
I have a nest of feathers and a song of love
You, whose eyes are filled with light
And whose hands are moist with anxiousness
On the wings of your fantasy
You have returned me to the days
Of my youth
Little one
I call you Little One
I say Little One
With all my voice
My dream
That I dream for you
Waits for you, Little One
With this song
The moon
What does the moon know
Of the sweet fortune
To love like I do
My dream
That I dream for you
Waits for you,
little one of my heart
I have waited for a long time
And I will wait much longer
I love you so much that you must one day come
It is not possible that I have the moon and the flower
And not your kisses filled with love
Where the river ends and the moon begins
Where no one has reached and never will
On the wings of your fantasy
You will be the happiness of my solitude
4. No sé como olvidar (3:33)
(music: Roberto ”Caracol” Paviotti; lyrics: María Volonté)
We said “Goodbye”
Then we cried
There is no consolation, no forgetting
I don’t know how to forget
Your smile in the café
Confessing your dreams
So many things to give
So much fear of love
And that way of moving
With your body wanting to be possessed
I don’t know how to forget
Your courage as you knocked
At my closed door
Your anxiousness that knew how to wait
Your kiss in the morning
And your scent on my pillow
We said “Goodbye”
Then we cried
There is no consolation, no forgetting
I don’t know how to forget
Your gift for discovering
My most secret pain
Your love without doubt
Your tenderness in silence
And the power of your hands
To calm any fire
I don’t know how to forget
That I don’t know how to breathe
Without your love and your embrace
How to begin again
If I can’t hear
Your voice or your footsteps
We said “Goodbye”
We cried
… only silence remains
5. Sauce Grande (2:42)
(music and lyrics by María Volonté)
The moon saw you leave
I am furious with her
Because she never wanted to tell me
Which way you went
I spoke to the black wind
That blows in the sand
Nor did he want to show me
How to erase the pain
Barefoot I crossed the plains
Trembling, I reached the river
I kissed your shadow in the water
And my soul was chilled to its core
My voice is so alone
I can’t lose it crying
Singing I found your love
So singing I will go on my way
I went to ask the ocean
Where to the promises go?
The froth only returned
the echo of my sadness
What is it about love
That you can’t ever forget?
First it cures your pain
Then it gives you the wound
That I suffer this way
Is my fault, I confess
You only asked for warmth
But I gave you my life in a kiss
My voice is so alone
I can’t lose it crying
Singing I found your love
So singing I will go on my way
6. La Flor de la Canela (4:00)
(Chabuca Granda)
Let me tell you, my friend from Lima
Let me tell you of the glory
Of the fantasy that the memory
of the old bridge, the river and line of trees brings to me
Let me tell you, my friend from Lima
While memory still has its perfume
While the old bridge, the river and the trees
Still thrive in my dreams
Jazmin in her hair and roses on her face
The Cinnamon Flower walked with grace
Spreading perfume and scent of seeds and bread
From her breast
From the bridge to the tree-lined avenue
Along the path that shudders
To the rhythm of her hips
She collects the laughter of the breeze
And spreads it all to the wind
From the bridge to the tree-lined avenue
Let me tell you, friend from Lima
Ah! Let me tell you my thoughts
And let’s see if you wake from your sleep,
The sleep that hides your feelings
Breathe of the scent of the Cinnamon Flower
Embellished with jazmin that celebrates her beauty
Carpet with flowers the bridge and the tree-lined avenue
And the river will accompany her passage on the path
7. Postales (3:13)
(music and lyrics by Raúl Carnota)
Sunset
Flowers in a garden
Thievery without loot
And an April landscape
Wind from the South
Final night
Sad dawn
Paper dreams
Train stations
Fleeting kisses
Old postcards
Pieces of life
Without voice or color
Lit from behind
Stupid postcards
Worn out photos
Filling the attic
As in a ritual
Grey lamps
Shadow of pain
Hollow, without love
Solitude
Solitude
8. Los Mareados (3:30)
(J.C. Cobián; Enrique Cadícamo)
Strange,
as if lit up,
I found you drinking,
pretty and ill-fated;
You were drinking,
and in the din of the champagne
you laughed crazily,
so as not to cry
Pity
I felt at finding you
because looking at you
I saw your eyes
shine
with an electric fire,
your beautiful eyes
that I adored so much.
Tonight, my friend,
we will get drunk;
I don't care if they laugh
and call us "drugged."
Everyone has their sorrows
and we have ours.
Tonight we will drink
because we won't ever
see each other again...
Today you will enter my past,
the past of my life.
My wounded soul bears three burdens:
Love, Regret, Pain.
Today you'll enter my past,
today we'll follow new paths.
Our love has been great
and, yet, ay!
look how little is left!
9. Naranjo en Flor (Orange Tree in Bloom) (4:52)
(Virgilio Expósito; Homero Expósito)
She was softer than water,
… than the soft water,
She was fresher than the river,
Orange tree in bloom
In that summer street,
forgotten street,
She left a piece of her life
and then she left...
First, you have to know how to suffer,
then how to love, then how to depart,
and in the end live without thinking
Perfume of orange blossoms,
Vain promises of love
that escaped in the wind...
Afterwards? What does afterwards matter?
All my life is a yesterday
that holds me in my past,
Eternal and ancient youth
that has left me broken
like a bird without light
What did my hands do?
What have they done
to leave in my chest
with so much pain?
Pain of an old grove,
song of a street corner
with a piece of life
Orange tree in bloom
10. Candombe Bailador (3:01)
(Daniel Maza; María Volonté)
I am like my song
A little bit from everywhere
And walking, I learned to not regret the past
Don’t fear living without direction,
Turning, turning in vain
Because with your hand in mine
I always know where to go
The doors of my heart
I wear them bravely flung wide open
That’s how your love found me
That’s how one day the pain went away
And even though you have your doubts
Together, we will dance
Follow me
Hold onto my hips
Don’t think, dance
At home or on the street
Follow my beat
Come dance life with me
If we are together, my love,
No one can stop us
Kevin Footer of Intrepid Patrol artistic agency for arranging the interview
