|
Rafael Ferro Salas, Grupo de Trabajo Decoro
PINAR DEL RIO, December (www.cubanet.org) - The first time I saw him I knew
he was one of the chosen. Then I had a bad omen. I remembered that someone said
that gods die young. It was clear. He had been touched by the hand of God to
shine with his own light. And he did it in a dizzying manner.
He emerged from anonimity overnight. He made music in a town lost in the
province of his birth, Pinar del Rio. The inhabitants of the village of Las
Terrazas didn't imagine that a god disguised as a buffoon strolled among them.
He was named Fernando Robles. He was born at the foot of a charcoal stove and
was predestined for music.
The night I saw him up close in his first concert for the people of Pinar
del Rio, he was already Polo Montañez and his music gave him a
round-the-world trip, seizing on the success. The concert organizers tried to
charge five dollars for admission. Polo knew the limitations of his people and
did not accept. It would be a concert with open doors, free for all. That was
his condition. They had to accept it.
Everyone danced and sang the artist's songs in chorus that night, carried
away until they were dead tired. They wanted to touch him to see if he was made
of flesh and bones. He seemed like an unreal being, like all that is wonderful.
At midnight on November 20th Cuba wept for Polo Montañez, who
struggled to win the battle against death in a hospital in Havana, the victim of
an absurd automobile accident. Six days later Polo Montañez ceased to
exist. The afternoon of his funeral I thought of Benny More, in his too early
death and his incurable mania of drowning himself in alcohol. Polo also suffered
from addiction, which served him for his leap to a death too soon. Death has a
short and inevitable step. On November 26 death proved it again, taking the "Natural
Guajiro". Polo escaped from life. We keep dancing and listening ad
infinitum. We will always see him fleeing from death in the middle of his song,
fleeing from himself.
Versión
original en español
| 
