Sterling Voice from a Silver Land

Listening Post 295. The heart exerts its own form of gravity: The farther it travels, the more it feels the tug of home. When 18-year-old Delfina Cheb arrived at Boston’s Berklee College of Music she recalls drinking in the global music universe—but when she began writing songs she found herself drawn to the sounds of Buenos Aires and the spray of the Río de la Plata. Five years later she has degrees in composition and voice performance, plus her debut album, Doce Milongas y un Tango Desesperado. Produced by Javier Limón (multi-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and artistic director of Berklee’s Mediterranean Music Institute), the album is a mesmerizing mix of Argentina’s preeminent music forms, with jazz, flamenco, habanera and electronic touches. It includes compositions by classic and contemporary artists—from Astor Piazzolla to Jorge Drexler—and solo and collaborative works written by Cheb and Limón. At the center is Delfina’s voice—at once demure and seductive, delicate and dulcet, near breaking yet unbroken—which personifies passion and courage, nostalgia and regret, the comfort of home and the horizon’s call. She displays the album’s split perspective in two key tracks: Emotion in the surrender of Milonga Sentimental (video 1) and motion in Milonga del Trovador, the song of an artist who leaves “handkerchiefs at the station” with every departure (video 2). Her memory is circular in Milonga de las Flores, rotating between rose, verse, kiss and thorn (video 3), and enters a void of mystery with Milonga Más Allá (Milonga of Nothing Beyond, video 4). If Cheb has a signature track so early in her career it is surely La Milonguera (video 5), the story of an artist who searches by singing. Inspired by a land of silver she carries in her valise, she spins drama and delight with her sterling voice. (Casa Limón America)

Delfina Cheb: Doce Milongas de Amor y un Tango Desesperado / Twelve Milongas of Love and One Tango of Despair*
Delfina Cheb: Voice
Javier Limón: Flamenco guitar
Israel Suárez “Piraña”: Percussion
Dany Noel: Electric bass, baby bass
Limón Jr: Keyboards
Strings:
Katy Rose Bennett: Violin I
Andrea Brun: Violin II
James Nelson: Viola
Amit Cachman: Cello
Pedro Osuna: String arrangement
Nando Michelin: Piano
Lautaro Greco: Bandoneon
The Horacio Avilano Guitar Quartet (Horacio Avilano, Pablo Juarez Levar, Pablo Hernan Mastromarino & Martín Bracone)
Kiki Morente: Guest vocals
Nella: Guest vocals
Produced by Javier Limón

*The album title is a play on Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada (Twenty poems of love and one song of despair), Palbo Neruda’s second collection of poems (published in 1924 when he was 19) and the best-selling book of Spanish poetry of all time.

Milonga Sentimental / Sentimental Milonga (feat. Lautaro Greco)
Sebastiãn Piana, Homero Manzi

(From the Spanish lyrics)
A Milonga to remember you by/A sentimental milonga
Others might complain with tears/I sing so as not to cry

Your love ended without warning/You never said why
I console myself/Thinking of it as a woman’s treachery

Man, to love you so much/Man, to want you so much
Man, to forget all the wrongs/Because I have already forgiven you

Maybe you’ll never know/Maybe you wouldn’t believe it
Maybe it would make you laugh/To see me throw myself at your feet

It’s easy to strike out/To accuse you of betrayal
Or to reach for a dagger/In the fog of passion

But it’s not easy to cut/The bonds of passion
When they are tightly wound/To the mast of my heart

Man, to love you so much/Man, to wish you the best
Man, to forget all the wrongs/Because I have already forgiven you

Maybe you’ll never know/Maybe you wouldn’t believe it
Maybe it would make you laugh/To see me throw myself at your feet

Milonga del Trovador / Milonga of the Troubadour (feat. The Horacio Avian Guitar Quartet)
Astor Piazzolla

I’m from a beautiful land in South America/A gaucho mix of Indian and Spanish
Dark skin and voice, I discovered with my guitar/That the world is arranged in verses, and I set out

With rumors from the nest
They came flying after me/Handkerchiefs at the station
But I am a pilgrim, and in my nostalgia/I sing like this in the ear of my heart

I go the distance, yes/I am a troubadour
If the horizon calls/I will never see the sun go down
I’m going all the way now/And if I don’t arrive, love
I leave my soul/As Argentine and singer

My house is where I sing/Because I have learned to listen
God’s voice that resonates everywhere
Echoes in the squares and in the kitchens/On the edge of the cradle and beyond the sea

If on this journey, one day/Old age awaits me
My childhood will be as a second voice
And at last with two throats, in my agony/I will sing from the ear in the heart

I go the distance, yes/I am a troubadour
If the horizon calls/I will never see the sun go down
I’m going all the way now/And if I don’t arrive, love
I leave my soul/As Argentine and singer

Milonga de las Flores / Milonga of Flowers
Javier Limón, Delfina Cheb

For every rose there is a verse/For every verse a corner
For every corner there is a kiss/And for every kiss a thorn

Jasmine on our path/Like children hand in hand
Hardly knowing each other/And harming them with fear

Every flower in my garden/Reminds me of a moment
Every flower in my garden/Reminds me of a moment
Of those who lived for you

These poor carnations/That your mother loved
Left me, wilted/Because I couldn’t water them

Precious violets/That I found on the way
How to explain the things/That only fate understands

Every flower in my garden/Reminds me of a moment
Every flower in my garden/Reminds me of a moment
Of those who lived for you.

Milonga de Más Allá / Milonga of Nothing Beyond
Javier Limón, Delfina Cheb

There is no way, there is no story/That can take me everywhere
Like the one that your eyes/Once told me

Between seas of memory/Like flowers and padlocks
Tears that made me/Forget about yesterday

Can it be that sometimes there is no right/To return
Without asking/Without explaining why
That Beyond there is nothing/Beyond there is nothing
Beyond there is nothing/There is nothing beyond

There will never be penance/For all my sins
Like a bird I flew/Through the sky of life

Although my pride was captive/In some golden cage
In the end I sing in freedom/I will always sing free

Can it be that sometimes there is no right/To return
Without asking/Without explaining why
That beyond there is nothing/Beyond there is nothing
Beyond there is nothing/There is nothing beyond

La Milonguera / The Milonguera (feat. Kiki Morente)
Javier Limón

I come from the Argentine land/From a town of sea and sand
Some call me Delfina/And others the Milonguera

I am a walker and as I go/Step by step on my way
Milongas, zambas and tangos/in search of my destiny

The Milonguera they call me/They call me the Milonguera
A singer of the soul/Singing is all I want
Until the dawn comes/And again the sun rises

The Milonguera they call me/They call me the Milonguera
From time to time I recount/Couplets of fire and moon
Stories of love and crying/That I sing to you like no other

When the candles go out/And no one is left in the room
I go on stage again/And sing my bitter song

I’ll sound a little sad/Like truth and fear
And the pain that survives/In the song of the old folks

The Milonguera they call me/They call me the Milonguera
I am a singer of the soul/Singing is all I want
Until the dawn comes/And again the sun rises