María Elena Walsh It is one of the most influential women in Argentine culture. Its impact on literature, poetry and music verify their beautiful talent to find irony and subtlety in social, political and world problems.
By the end of the 60s’, Walsh It was beginning to stand out through his music for boysa songbook that ended in 1978 but left memorable successes and indelible melodies. In that musical stage, the artist recorded “Like the cicada” in a disc of 1973in a warm interpretation of an exciting issue, which captured a collective feeling of Argentine social and political life.
“Like the cicada”, a song with mutation in its meaning
The song arrived at the peak of the country, when they were celebrated Two presidential elections; that of March 11, where Cámpora beat, and that of September 23, which won Perón with 62% of the votes. 73 ‘meant the end of the intervention by the armed forces of power.
Both “and the cicada” and the rest of the album positioned it as an essential icon of popular music, which globally reflected on the state of things. However, Violence seized Argentine political reality, and thus came the bloodiest dictatorship of our history.
But, in addition to the political situation of the moment, Walsh had composed the iconic song with another meaning in mind; He referred to the obstacles that artists and ups and downs are going through.
For him March 24, 1976the song was rediscovered and resignified. “So many times they erased me/so I disappeared my own funeral I went alone and crying/I made a knot from the handkerchief but I forgot later/that it was not the only time/and continued singing”could be a clear reference to missing. The song was then censored during the last years of the then called process.
Anyway, in the following years “like the cicada” was reversed by several artists, including, Mercedes Sosawho had one of the most powerful interpretations in that concert of 1982when he returned from exile. “ So many times they killed me/so many times I died/however I am here resuscitating “says the lyrics that could also be addressed to Sosa.
A year earlier, Walsh It was diagnosed with bone cancer, which finally exceeded. Again, the lyrics refloat again in another verse: “Singing to the sun like the cicada, after a year under the earth, just like survivor, which returns from the war“
In an interview, when the artist was challenged for choosing a song from all her repertoire, he said: “Manuelita should say because it is the song that gave me the greatest recognition here and abroad, the most sung song, but If I have to choose one of my songs, I stay with another bug: I choose the cicadafundamentally for what it represents for my compatriots. “
Source: Ambito
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