Listening to Silvio Rodríguez's Días y flores

Silvio Rodríguez is one of the most famous Latin American songwriters of the second part of the 20th century.His songs punctuate the soundtrack in the lives of many generations of Ibero-Americans who found in them spiritual refuge, moral revitalization, and political expression. His first commercial album, Días y flores (Days and Flowers), released in 1975, stands as a symbol of an exceptionally creative moment in Cuba and a politically charged period in the world. Alejandro L. Madrid takes this LP as a point of entry into understanding how young people around the world saw in Silvio’s songs a poetic and musical reflection of their utopian dreams to build a more egalitarian and just society. The book also explores how these ideas are transformed and made meaningful anew at a time when the revolutionary Cuban experiment seemed to have finally expired but also at a politically convoluted moment that witnessed the rise of many totalitarian and oppressive regimes around the world.