The monster of reason begets dreams

Under the big sky of poetry or rather on the earth or on the world of poetry, which includes skies, stars, gods and mortals, is singing the nightingale of... Juan Gelman and César Stroscio, the one poet, the other musician or, without inspecting the fiscal codes, the one poet and the other too, or both musicians or, that's Mr. Gelman again, the one down of phosphorescent seaweed becoming Singapore, where a quivering sex woman wakes up discussing Malevic, the other my hometown band who plays sweet waltzes until the trombone goes off pitch, and the others go as well.
In the big world of poetry, i said, Juan Gelman is an author who doesn't need an introduction or an endorsement by the overnight sensations’ managers: suffice it to say that he was born in Buenos Aires in 1930, he lived there till the golpe in 1976, he faced suffering during the dictatorship’s years that forced him to a painful exile in Mexico first, then in Europe (two years in Rome) and United States and finally in Mexico City again. His work has been translated and published in many countries (in Italy by Guanda), and has been awarded very often. In 1980 for example, Mr. Gelman won the Mondello Prize for Poetry, while just a few months ago he was given the prestigious Juan Rulfo by the Mexican President.
On the other hand, to speak of César Stroscio means to speak of a piece of the Tango history (i send my impatient readers to one of the Tangueros Quarterly Review’s next issues): despite he has been internationally active for almost four decades, Mr. Stroscio has never recorded a solo bandoneòn album before "Ruiseñores de nuevo". Or rather, he has never recorded a solo bandoneòn album wearing the long trousers, since César as a child had already made a four Tangos plaquette, all alone and when he was just ten years old.
With "Ruiseñores de nuevo" Mr. Gelman and Mr. Stroscio cement an artistic alliance and a friendship that come from the swingin’ Buenos Aires of the sixties. The tape has been live recorded in studio for the National Radio of Koln (Germany) in 1988; all attempts to put it on record failed until the French label Buda included it in its catalogue in 1998 with the fine intention of stirring things up in the over-disputed "poetry in music" mining lot, which is known to be short indeed of gold veins.
On the contrary, the ore body hold in concession by the Gelman & Stroscio Enterprise is teeming with vivid metaphors and sensational tangos, on the surge of an interplay rich in emotion and dare-devil attitude. What a thrill in these two artists who meet again with closed eyes amid sumptuous harmonies and Bohemian memories, old divine French waltzes, Keats, Rimbaud, Portuguese multitudes, cherries that sprout in the eyes and then milongas, shelters, camels, nostalgia and persuasive Ginevra bottles.
In conclusion, I will go back to gemmology and say that "Ruiseñores de nuevo" is the faithful registration of the encounter and the embrace between two poets, whose concomitance does not come from a prearranged record company policy, but from their everyday need of expressing with words and notes, the commitment and the venture of their passionate life.

© Marco Castellani - 1991

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