it had to be you
“It had to be you” sounded almost like an epilogue to the concert Silvana Estrada in The Sea of Music and then everything fell into place on a night filled with the tragicomedy of football. It had to be her who was on the stage of the Paco Martín Auditorium just at the time when Spain won the World Cup. That sounded as auspicious as “Good Luck, Good Night,” when the concert stopped at the same time as the stadium clock in New York. “we have won” they told her from the audience, all that was left was to enjoy. And above all, enjoy the concert, after a late night of transistors, after a previous day where María Arnal had to cancel her concert unexpectedly due to a family misfortune, after a soccer World Cup that aimed to muddy everything that La Mar de Músicas has always promoted, the cultural union of the peoples of Latin America.
Dressed in passion red, not national team red, not soccer passion, that too, Silvana appeared as always celebratory, toasting life and the sea. Over Cartagena, in this torrid summer, he dropped the songs of ““Soft rains will come”, I wish they would drop on the still-smoking Auditorium at midnight. But we are talking about a repertoire, that of their latest album, crossed by loss, memory and the need to learn to say goodbye. A feat as difficult for her as the one that was celebrated below in the streets of Cartagena. Nobody said it was going to be easy, the phrase of the day.
It was time for the “Truce”, here and in the stadium, and that other recurring message tomorrow will see everything differently, with a cool head we will realize what we have achieved. In the case of Silvana, he advised, in this moment of raw emotions in which her concerts immerse us and which leads us to instantly write that nothing is the same without youWell, maybe it’s better to leave it for tomorrow because it might not be like that. She knows it well, you know it well.
Among the fireworks that interrupted from afar, “A Ray of Light” sneaks in. A fair memory of the previous World Cup event and that loss she suffered with the death of Jorge Tirado, a musician and inseparable friend murdered along with her brother in 2022. Silvana remembered that creative block she suffered and her refuge in Chavela Vargas’ residence where she wrote a song that continues to shock live.
Then came “I save you”, the external bustle dissipated and allowed the audience to chant. I have three possible faces and you take them all away from me but in a fragile way, almost as if singing it too loud could make it disappear.
It was time to look “To the North”, to head home, because the long tour of Europe ended in Cartagena after almost three months of travel. She was precisely congratulating herself on her meeting a few days earlier with Juan Luis Guerra and Rubén Blades in Seville and took the opportunity to dedicate that “Because for you I’m going to the North and for you I’m going to the South”, to all those people she has met along the way and above all to the family that accompanies her on the road. Because Silvana recognizes that she always likes to travel in the company of her people and what they represent, those who are here and those who are no longer there. That is also why for this tour he incorporated “Aguacero de mayo” by Totó La Momposina, a tribute to one of the greatest ambassadors of cumbia and Afro-Colombian rhythms and who precisely died in this month of May. Because everything that happens around Silvana Estrada takes on meaning or at least invites it. And yes, on this night that seemed condemned to that soccer tragicomedy that is the penalty shootout, “It had to be you,” it had to be her, the one who brought that soft rain among so many hot reactions. I gave you everything I had… They said goodbye from the edge of the stage, as always about to jump off another cliff. The one of every day, the one of every night.
