January 2020 - Uno De Dos

I wrote a bunch of songs in my teens and recorded a few with SONIDO for an album called Evolution in 1995. I kept writing words over the next 20 years, but only wrote a handful of actual songs (including a couple that I co-wrote with some of the guys for Veneno). Over the years I guess I considered myself someone who could write songs but didn't, but in the last few years I'm not sure I believed that anymore.

Many years went by with SONIDO performing amazing songs by the iconic groups of Andean music, Illapu, Inti Illimani and Los Kjarkas among others (and a few of our own from Evolution). And I perhaps started to forget that writing my own songs was an option. Until one day we did one of our many gigs at 505 and, like on many other occasions, our good friend Pato Lara performed a few songs (importantly, a few of his own songs). It wasn't the first time I had heard him perform original songs, but for some reason this time it really jolted me - we were about to get back on stage to perform covers, when I knew we were capable of writing and performing our own songs, if we would just pull our finger out!

I left that gig determined to write a song. It had been so long, I knew I had to start small: a simple song in a traditional form, one to replace one of the stalwarts of the repertoire. I settled on a chuntunqui, a favourite song-type for the love songs of Los Kjarkas. One verse, a pre-chorus and a chorus - that's it. And the subject matter is similarly simple: a love song about the unsettling thrill of two becoming one.

It's a long way from my best song, but it's special to me because it gave me the confidence to start writing again, knowing that there was good stuff in there to be tapped if I just gave myself the chance to tap it.

Que engañoso es lo cotidiano

Imperceptible

Tu caricia y querer se internalizan

Invisibles

Pero hoy sentada aquí te veo

Y por un momento la realización

Me desnivela

Que tipo de magia es esta

Parece hacer uno de dos

Pero más

Siempre mas

Que el amor aumenta todo

Translation

How deceptive the everyday is,

Imperceptible.

Your caresses and love become internalised,

Invisible.

But today, sitting here, I see you,

And for a moment that realisation

Puts me in a spin.

What kind of magic is this,

That seems to make one from two,

But more,

Always more,

For love amplifies all.