"Mi viejo" and the music of childhood: a farewell to Piero
I read a personal column on Infobae by Guillermo E. Pintos, written after learning of the death of Italo-Argentine singer-songwriter Piero. I found it a very beautiful way to say goodbye to an artist: by telling what his music meant in an ordinary home.
Pintos remembers his childhood on the outskirts of Olavarría in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, when the radio and the record player played all day and were his doorway to new music. He mentions Ricardo Soulé and Vox Dei, and the album "Cuero caliente" that his family brought from La Plata for his brother. His father, Víctor Pintos, hosted a sports program on the local radio station LU 32 on Sundays, and every Father's Day he opened the show with "Mi viejo" and read a text he had written for his own father.
For the author, that song expresses the affection between two men of few words who never knew how to get close or say what they felt. He also recalls the duo of Piero with journalist and writer José Tcherkaski, who wrote the lyrics with social observation and everyday characters while Piero provided the music and interpretation. From that partnership came "Mi viejo", "Pedro Nadie", "Juan Boliche", "Para el pueblo lo que es del pueblo" and "Un hombre común".
The column also recounts that Rubén Blades, while studying law in Panama, said Piero was the first artist he saw bring the ballad into an urban format with a social story, and that years later Blades composed "Pablo Pueblo". About "Juan Boliche", Pintos observes that the bar is the only place where the character exists socially, and that the proper name fused with the name of the place makes him part of the landscape. He also recalls Mercedes Sosa singing "Soy pan, soy paz, soy más" at the Teatro Ópera in February 1982, while the dictatorship was still in power, as an act of collective healing.
The column closes with "Buen viaje, tano". For me, what stays is the idea that a short song can hold decades of affection.
Source: Infobae
Pintos remembers his childhood on the outskirts of Olavarría in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, when the radio and the record player played all day and were his doorway to new music. He mentions Ricardo Soulé and Vox Dei, and the album "Cuero caliente" that his family brought from La Plata for his brother. His father, Víctor Pintos, hosted a sports program on the local radio station LU 32 on Sundays, and every Father's Day he opened the show with "Mi viejo" and read a text he had written for his own father.
For the author, that song expresses the affection between two men of few words who never knew how to get close or say what they felt. He also recalls the duo of Piero with journalist and writer José Tcherkaski, who wrote the lyrics with social observation and everyday characters while Piero provided the music and interpretation. From that partnership came "Mi viejo", "Pedro Nadie", "Juan Boliche", "Para el pueblo lo que es del pueblo" and "Un hombre común".
The column also recounts that Rubén Blades, while studying law in Panama, said Piero was the first artist he saw bring the ballad into an urban format with a social story, and that years later Blades composed "Pablo Pueblo". About "Juan Boliche", Pintos observes that the bar is the only place where the character exists socially, and that the proper name fused with the name of the place makes him part of the landscape. He also recalls Mercedes Sosa singing "Soy pan, soy paz, soy más" at the Teatro Ópera in February 1982, while the dictatorship was still in power, as an act of collective healing.
The column closes with "Buen viaje, tano". For me, what stays is the idea that a short song can hold decades of affection.
Source: Infobae
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