Gallo rojo, gallo negro

One of the unexpected pleasures of learning Spanish has been discovering music that I probably never would have encountered otherwise.

Some time ago I heard Sílvia Pérez Cruz sing Gallo rojo, gallo negro. Her version, haunting and fragile, was enough to make me look for the original, by Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio, and from there I found Canciones de la resistencia española: a collection of songs written and recorded during Franco’s dictatorship.

I was immediately hooked.

Rooster allegory

Gallo rojo, gallo negro (Los dos gallos) is probably the perfect introduction to these songs because even separated from its historical context, it is an exceptionally well-written piece of folk music.

The central image is wonderfully simple: two roosters, one red and one black, confronting one another. From that image Ferlosio builds an entire political allegory without needing to spell it out. The black rooster represents the forces of repression; the red rooster, resistance.

But what I particularly love is that the song isn’t merely about the two sides fighting. It is also about singing itself.

When the red rooster sings, his song encourages others to sing. That idea becomes considerably more powerful when you remember that this was written under a dictatorship in which political expression was censored and opposition could carry very real consequences. Singing is not decoration here. Singing is a risky act of rebellion.

And then there is the recurring image of the wind carrying away what is sung. There is something almost painfully beautiful and poignant about it. A person sings, the words exist for a moment, and then the wind erases them. Yet the message of the song, when rooted in truth and hope in the struggle against tyranny, continues anyway.

The writing is full of little touches that make me love it more every time I hear it. Even the wordplay and rhymes around desencanto and lo que yo canto are memorable. It has the economy that great folk songs often have: simple vocabulary and images carrying far more weight than their literal meaning suggests.

Songs that had to leave Spain

Knowing the history makes it considerably more affecting.

Ferlosio’s songs were recorded clandestinely at his home and taken out of Spain to Sweden, where they could be released beyond the reach of Francoist censorship. His name was omitted from the original release for his own safety. There is something extraordinary about listening now, decades later, to a man with an acoustic guitar singing songs that had to leave the country quietly in order to survive.

It reminds me somewhat of the American protest-folk tradition of people like Woody Guthrie, which I have loved for years. But these recordings possess a different urgency and weight. They weren’t retrospective songs about repression or historical injustice. They came from inside a country governed by an authoritarian dictatorship while that dictatorship was still very much alive.

And Gallo rojo, gallo negro is only one song.

The rest of Canciones de la resistencia española is well worth hearing. The album is stark: largely a voice, an acoustic guitar, and the words. That simplicity is part of what makes it so powerful.

Listening as a Spanish learner

It also makes the album fantastic material for someone learning Spanish.

One reason I originally fell in love with acoustic folk music in English was that I tend to listen to lyrics more than anything else. I want to hear the words. A large band can sometimes obscure them; a person with a guitar leaves nowhere for them to hide.

The same thing now makes this kind of music enormously rewarding in Spanish. The instrumentation is sparse. The voice is exposed. The songs repeat phrases and images naturally. And because the words actually matter, understanding another line doesn’t feel like completing a language exercise. It reveals another part of the song.

That may be my favorite kind of language learning: when Spanish stops being the subject and becomes the means through which I discover something else.

I went looking for a song I had heard Sílvia Pérez Cruz sing. I ended up finding a small musical record of resistance to a dictatorship.

For anyone even remotely interested in Spanish music, folk music, political history, or simply great songwriting, I highly recommend listening to Canciones de la resistencia española from beginning to end.