"Silencio" (Spanish for "silence") is a

bolero Bolero is a genre of song which originated in eastern Cuba in the late 19th century as part of the trova tradition. Unrelated to the older Spanish dance of the same name, bolero is characterized by sophisticated lyrics dealing with love. It h ...

written in 1932 by Puerto Rican musician and composer Rafael Hernández. It has become a standard of the

Latin music Latin music (Portuguese language, Portuguese and ) is a term used by the music industry as a catch-all category for various styles of music from Ibero-America, which encompasses Music of Latin America, Latin America, Music of Spain, Spain, Mu ...

repertoire, with notable performances by artists such as

Cuarteto Machín Cuarteto (), sometimes called cuartetazo, is a musical genre born in Córdoba, Argentina. The roots of the cuarteto ensemble are in Italian and Spanish dance ensembles. The name was coined because the early dance-hall numbers were invariably ...

, Daniel Santos,

Noro Morales Norberto "Noro" Morales (January 4, 1911 – January 15, 1964) was a Puerto Rican pianist and bandleader. Biography Morales was born in the subbarrio Puerta de Tierra of San Juan, Puerto Rico to father Luis Morales Barada, a musician, and m ...

and

Ibrahim Ferrer Ibrahim Ferrer (20 February 1927 – 6 August 2005) was a Cuban singer who played with the group Los Bocucos for nearly forty years. He also performed with Conjunto Sorpresa, Chepín y su Orquesta Oriental, and Mario Patterson. After his re ...

. This bolero should not be confused with the omelenkó of the same name composed by Elsa Angulo Macías and recorded by

Celia Cruz Celia Caridad Cruz Alfonso (21 October 1925 – 16 July 2003), known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of , earning the nickna ...

with

La Sonora Matancera La Sonora Matancera is a Cuban band that played Latin American urban popular dance music. Founded in 1924 and led for more than five decades by guitarist, vocalist, composer, and producer Rogelio Martínez, musicologists consider it an icon o ...

in 1953.

Recordings

Buena Vista Social Club

Recorded by various artists in the world of Hispanic music, it came to wider prominence when it was included in the Oscar-nominated soundtrack of the 1999 documentary film

Buena Vista Social Club Buena Vista Social Club was a musical ensemble primarily made up of Cuban musicians, formed in 1996. The project was organized by World Circuit (record label), World Circuit executive Nick Gold, produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder and dire ...

, set in Cuba and directed by Wim Wenders. The song was sung by well-known singers

and

Omara Portuondo Omara Portuondo Peláez (born 29 October 1930) is a Cuban singer and dancer. A founding member of the popular vocal group Cuarteto d'Aida, Portuondo has collaborated with many important Cuban musicians during her long career, including Julio G ...

, and conducted by

Juan de Marcos González Juan de Marcos González (born Juan de Marcos González-Cárdenas; January 29, 1954) is a Cuba Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of isl ...

, featuring

Ry Cooder Ryland Peter Cooder (born March 15, 1947) is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, and h ...

on guitar. The scene from the film in which the song is performed is particularly poignant because the age of the performers (72 and 69, respectively; the oldest bandmember was 91 and several others were over 80 years old) is contrasted by the freshness and emotional intensity of the performance, in which she is moved to tears that he tenderly brushes away. The song was not included in the Buena Vista Social Club eponymous album, but rather in Ferrer's ''Buena Vista Social Club Presents Ibrahim Ferrer'', released in 1999 by World Circuit.

Other versions

At the height of his career (the late 1950s until his death in 1964), the Puerto Rican pianist and bandleader

released a series of recordings of

ballroom rumba Rhumba, also known as ballroom rumba, is a genre of ballroom music and ballroom dance, dance that appeared in the East Coast of the United States during the 1930s. It combined American big band music with Afro-Cuban rhythms, primarily the son cub ...

pieces arranged for his sextet, without vocals and with (an innovation) the piano playing both melody and rhythm. Several of his successes were composed by Hernández, among them "Silencio". The 1969 Mexican film "El jibarito Rafael", set in Puerto Rico, has a scene where a tuxedo-clad singer (Felipe Pirela) sings the song as he wanders around the nightclub where the protagonist couple is sitting, to end up facing the girl directly as he begins the phrase "Silencio ..."Details on ''El jibarito Rafael'' at IMDB
/ref> The Italian Singer Fabio Lepore made his version on the album "Pausa Caffe'"

Lyrics

The first two lines of the song, "Duermen en mi jardín / Las blancas azucenas", translates as ''Sleeping in my garden / The white lilies''. The order of these lines is reversed in some versions. The third line, ''Los nardos y las rosas'' or ''The tuberoses and the roses'', is omitted entirely from some versions. Further lines of the song talk about a tormented soul: ''And my soul, very sad and heavy, Wants to hide from the flowers, Its bitter pain''. The singer hides their true feelings: ''I don't want the flowers to know, The torments' life sends me, If they knew what I suffer. With my pains, they too would cry''. The point is reiterated: ''Silence; let them sleep, The nards and the lilies. I don't want them to know my sadness''. The final line, repeated three times, translates as ''Because, if they see me crying, they’ll die''. All the flowers mentioned are heavily scented, and hence have a palpable and evocative presence, even at night, in the dark, when they are "sleeping". This attribute leads to the

conceit An extended metaphor, also known as a conceit or sustained metaphor, is the use of a single metaphor or analogy at length in a work of literature. It differs from a mere metaphor in its length, and in having more than one single point of contact be ...

that the flowers are as sensitive to human emotions, just as humans are to their scents.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Silencio (Rafael Hernandez song) Boleros Puerto Rican songs 1932 songs