Luis Eduardo Aute

   I want to share something with you. The link below is to s a song by Luis Eduardo Aute interpreted by a singer named Tania Libertad. I have listened to the song for many years because I like the style,, but just yesterday I began earnestly translating the lyrics. At first I suspected this was an antiwar song yet there seemed to be another taste lingering there, perhaps also a condemnation of a society in which people have traded their spiritual potential for unadulterated materialism.  At least the last few lines hint at that. Their meaning is elusive.
     The interpretation sung by Tania Libertad is accompanied by a honky tonk piano sound although the melody is not honky,, it summons something from the past, the lyrics scorning the totemic reality that what has taken place repeats itself endlessly. The theme of the song I think,  reflects the disillusionment of man. I can imagine it being sung at an inebriated party of war heroes. Someone sits at the piano and the haunting melody begins capturing the crowd's attention, as music will do. As the lyrics continue the audience is drawn from an initial promise of meloncholy bliss and becomes increasingly disenchanted.
    The song  was written in 1989 by Luis Eduardo Aute,, who was born in the Phillipines but has Spanish decendency. I have been reading about him. He was born in 1943. It seems it was not to villify war that prompted his song but  the disappointment over the direction taken by the government of Spain during the end of the 80's. Sometimes I wonder if it is not better to avoid investigations about author's motives when our first impression collides with an author's intentions. The lyrics are ambiguous enough to allow multiple interpretations. Perhaps Aute was motivated by the spanish version of the CIA called CESID, Centro Superior de Información de la Defensa, a quasi military organization that collected information on spanish citizens and attempted to subvert the Basque movement.
     In post Franco Spain there was economic and social  turmoil.  Spanish society had troubles assimilating itself into the new world that presented itself.  According to Aute however, what had begun as a libertarian chant by leaders at that moment,  metamophosed into another more sinister song. Try to remember that awkward epoch in Spain when, after the death of Franco, the  conservative yoke was lifted and all the liberalism that the world had been experiencing since the 60's  hit Spain like the hot kiss on the end of a wet fist. This added to Spain's inability to cope with a 1970's oil crisis that practically destroyed the economy. Also the Basque movement led by ETA was blowing up people left and right. Aute was disappointed at the broken promises of the ruling party. After all Aute was 60's guy, influenced by Bob Dylan. He was writing about a society, Spain, that was not his own from a distance. I don't want to seem like I am rejecting the 60's and their social conscience. That generation, even if many became stockbrokers and charlatans, made a great mark on social conscience. However the lyrics are meaningful as they consider broken social promises by those who assume power.
     I have copied the lyrics in spanish followed by my english translation which suffers muchly methinks.

https://youtu.be/oUWj1aez53s

Enemigo de la guerra
Y su reverso, la medalla
No propuse otra batalla
Que librar al corazón
De ponerse cuerpo a tierra
Bajo el paso de una historia
Que iba a alzar hasta la gloria
El poder de la razón
Y ahora que ya no hay trincheras
El combate es la escalera
Y el que trepe a lo mas alto
Pondrá a salvo su cabeza
Aunque se hunda en el asfalto
La belleza
Míralos, como reptiles
Al acecho de la presa
Negociando en cada mesa
Maquillajes de ocasión
Siguen todos los raíles
Que conduzcan a la cumbre
Locos por que nos deslumbre
Su parásita ambición
Antes iban de profetas
Y ahora el éxito es su meta
Mercaderes, traficantes
Mas que nausea dan tristeza
No rozaron ni un instante
La belleza
Y me…

Y me hablaron de futuros
fraternales, solidarios,
donde todo lo falsario
acabaría en el pilón.
Y ahora que se cae el muro
ya no somos tan iguales,
tanto vendes, tanto vales,
¡viva la revolución!
Reivindico el espejismo
de intentar ser uno mismo,
ese viaje hacia la nada
que consiste en la certeza
de encontrar en tu mirada
la belleza

Enemy of war
And the flip side, the medal.
I do not propose another battle
To liberate the heart
To become a body in the earth.
Beneath some version of history
That was going to raise up to glory,
The power of reason.
And now that there are no trenches,
Yet combat is the ladder,
And the one that climbs to the highest,
Will save his head
Even as that ladder sinks into the asphalt
The beauty.
 
I see them as reptiles,
Stalking in the lagoon,
Negotiating at different tables.
Made up for the occaision,
They follow the fixed rails
That lead to the summit.
It's crazy that they dazzle us
With their parasite ambition,
Before you were a prophet,
Now only success is your goal,
Merchants, traffickers,
Only sad nausea remains.
You never touched even for an instant
The beauty

And you spoke of many futures,
Fraternity and solidarity,
Where everything false
Would end up against the wall.
And now that wall is falling,
And we find we are not so equal,
So many vouchers, so much sold,
Long live the revolution!
I affirm the mirage
Of attempting to be oneself,
That voyage towards nothing,
That consists of one certainty,
That one must find their own horizon.
That is the the beauty