So moving is the tune, it touches such deep feelings in your soul that even troublemaker Jaen himself had to interrupt his recording to let a couple a tears run down his cheeks, caused by this piece of love, heartbreak and lost paradises.
To delve into it is to get into a spiritual train, whether it is at the Gare d’Austerlitz or any other station in life, to go on this journey of emotions and learning that existence is, and it’s not worth doing alone.
Sabinas followers own a lot to the unconditional Pancho Varona, more than if we were fans of the Atletico de Madrid soccer team: at a Lima hotel, among drinks and hugs, the arranger gave Joaquin the idea to compose this beauty with which he wanted to honor the great Bob Dylan.
Pancho himself tells in his blog that Sabina was always a fan of Dylan’s and a piece named To Ramona. He wanted Joaquin to compose something like that, but his own way, and they took advantage of their stay in Peru for the idea to become a reality.
The musician evokes as rhymes emerged, sprinkled with whisky and complicity, with the enthusiasm of those who knew were the creators of something beautiful. “Each word is of an insulting beauty. Each verse is a work of art,” Varona says.
The “trouppe” that follows Sabina gets thrilled every time that the song is played, it’s inevitable in each concert, each tour. And although many have sung it with greater or lesser success, Ana Belen made it her own as no one else.
Included in the album Peces de ciudad (2001), Ana Belen put her heart into it and sang it smoothly, without much fuss or excesses, like taking the person who listens to it on a five-and-a-half minute journey of memories with which anyone could identify himself.
It’s a poetic piece, with several references to places and characters. It begins in Paris, makes a stopover in Amsterdam, mistrusts “snobbish New York,” steps on the sky of Madrid, and understands in Comala “that you shouldn’t go back to the place where you’ve been happy.”
Anyway, I always come back to it, either to get nostalgic and review the ups and downs of life or to simply enjoy it with the love that accompanies me on this exciting journey.
Taken from Orbe
By Charly Morales Valido
Chief Correspondent/San Salvador
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