19.3.18

MARCO ANTONIO SOLÍS, “TU AMOR O TU DESPRECIO”

12th July, 2003

Wiki | Video

My moderated take on Maná's music last week is the product of having worked on this blog for eight years: when I started it, I was certain I would adore Maná as a breath of fresh air. But my esteem for straight-up rock has diminished, while my esteem for the romantic Mexican balladry Maná was always a reaction to has only grown. I've publicly despised (or, more kindly, didn't get) a lot of Marco Antonio Solís's work over the years, but here's where I come around fully on the man.

Possibly it's just the production, thick but detailed, with tenderly atmospheric horn charts and swooping strings, a  rhythm carried by timbales and bajo sexto, that generates this response; the aging classicist in me appreciates how well this follows the template of the Golden Age of Mexican song. Solís's thin voice isn't very like the burnished flexibility of Jorge Negrete's or Pedro Infante's, but his shift into a fuller-throated register for the chorus "Tal vez es un error hoy de mi parte..." (Perhaps it's a mistake on my part) is more than adequate.

"Tu Amor o du Desprecio" (Your Love or Your Contempt) takes a relatively unusual theme in the love-song genre: it's a breakup song, but the singer is hesitant throughout to commit to actually saying so, aware of how much pain -- and how much power to inflict pain -- it will create. The final line, "I will have to take either your love or your contempt," is a remarkably clear-eyed and adult summation, refusing either self-martyrdom or self-pity.

It does run on a touch too long: five minutes is an eternity when you've sung the entire song in two. But I can forgive a lot when it sounds this good.

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