Francisco Gorrindo specialized in lyrics that confront hard topics with a kind of newspaper cartoon realism. When dealing with romance, as in “Paciencia,” his pessimistic gaze burned away polite pretense to reveal the everyday truth—that sometimes attraction is nothing but wishful thinking, a mirage we conjure in desperate nostalgia. “La bruja” deals with a similar predicament: a man wakes up from lustful enchantment, to realize he is destroying himself in a craze of idolatry.
Nowadays we might be tempted to hear misogyny in these lyrics, but that kind of puritan reflex misses the story and its subtle humor. This is the ancient theme, always difficult to address, of the siren or femme fatale—the powers and dangers of seduction. The realm here is not societal but psychosexual; and the singer blames himself as much as his sorceress. He is the dupe in the gutter, the same one of love’s losers who cries throughout the genre.
The language of the second stanza projects a new background onto the picture. He sings of returning to the counter-virtues we often hear about (but never witness) in tangos of the turbulent ’30s—simplicity, honesty, family. In a brilliant finale, Gorrindo compares the wayward affair to a bad cold, letting the singer imagine that someday, in retrospect, he’ll view the insanity of his seduction as “a bit of a cough.” And perhaps this little symptom will linger on, as he daydreams about reforming himself into another new cartoon.
The Sorceress
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Alberto Echagüe (orq. D’Arienzo)
I’m choking the cry back that rises within me
And tightens my lips with a grudge overdue,
To come back beside you, my hands in my pockets,
But only to tell you that everything’s through.
That now I don’t care for your tears or your laughter,
That I found the courage to master my heart,
That now more than ever, assessing you closely,
I look at you truly, and see what you are.
The Sorceress,
Once queen of my world
And all that I knew,
Who’s now just a woman
Whose spell broke in two.
The Sorceress,
A mountain of whimsies
That made me a slave,
Is now just a landscape
As grim as the grave.
The life that I lead now is simple and honest,
The feelings I have now are noble and true,
And now maybe someday, my soul done its healing,
I’ll raise me a family, as men ought to do.
Perhaps I’ll accomplish by then my redeeming,
And who can imagine the way you’ll come off—
A bad cold of winter with all of its ailments,
A life by the wayside, a bit of a cough.
La bruja (1938)
Music: Juan Polito
Lyrics: Francisco Gorrindo
Ahogando ese grito que sube del pecho,
y llega a los labios cargao de rencor,
yo vuelvo a tu lado, atadas las manos
pero pa’ decirte que todo acabó.
Que ya no me importa tu risa o tu llanto,
que a fuerza ’e coraje vencí al corazón,
y que hoy como nunca mirándote cerca,
te veo realmente, así como sos.
La Bruja,
que ayer fuera reina
de todo mi ser,
hoy, roto el encanto,
no es más que mujer.
La Bruja,
montón de caprichos
que me esclavizó,
hoy es un paisaje,
cubierto de horror.
Me vuelvo a la vida sencilla y honrada,
me vuelvo a un cariño que es noble y leal,
y puede que un día, curada mi alma,
a fuerza de hombría, levante un hogar.
Entonces acaso me habré redimido,
y vos, para entonces, quién sabe si sos,
un cacho de invierno cargado de males,
un resto de vida, un poco de tos.