When I was young missionary in Puerto Rico, trying to build relationships of trust with the local youth by discussing our favorite music, these Puerto Rican teens would in hushed, reverent tones share Robi Draco Rosa's 1996 album "Vagabundo." We missionaries all quickly learned why--this is an album of haunting memory, fear of death, lost love, and sheer musical genius. Other CDs I bought in Puerto Rico I got for primarily nostalgic reasons--but "Vagabundo" I got because it was just so awesome!
The misleadingly-entitled first track "Hablando de Amor" ("Speaking of Love") is a brief, minor-chord guitar number set against nocturnal noises, which sets the tone of haunting introspection that will pervade this entire album.
That quiet quickly gives way to the raging distorted guitar riffs of "Madre Tierra" ("Mother Earth") that lays down the gauntlet for new listeners; another post-Menudo pop-singer Draco Rosa is not!
"Llanto Subteraneo" ("Subterranean Weeping") calms things down again, but only slightly, with a menacing sense of dread waiting to erupt. A subtle Spanish trumpet creeps in to enhance the tension, marking this rock album as uniquely Latino.
In the title-track "Vagabundo" ("Vagabond") he describes himself in a desert dying of thirst, with sand and scorpion, "tu y yo/en un mar de fuego/bajo el beso de la noche," "camino/camino," "trono sin rey/templo sin dios/un vagabundo" ("you and I/in an ocean of fire/under the kiss of the night," "I travel/I travel," "throne without king/temple without God/a vagabond").
"Penelope" seems to at last cheer things up, but only if you don't know the lyrics--it's a song about love lost, years after the fact, and waking up one morning only to remember her yet again. How often have I found myself singing along to "Que lejos tu/que legos yo/los escombros de mi vida se deslizan con la lluvia/olvidando a Penelope..." ("How far are you/How far am I/the crumbs of my life dissolve with the rain/forgetting Penelope..."). Perhaps the only reason I know that "Naufragio" means "shipwreck" is from this song.
"Delirios" ("Deliriums") speeds things right back up, opening with a sound of panicked panting, then exploding into a whirlwind Punk riff of fury and angst.
"Para No Olvidar" ("To Not Forget") resembles a late-80s Metallica drudge, and gets straight to the core of this album's overriding obsession: the haunting fear of death. He wails "Morir es olvidar/sed olvidado" ("To die is to forget/be forgotten"). I learned how to conjugate command-form from this song.
"Blanca Mujer" ("White Woman") is a sad piano ballad about a heart-broken young man in New Orleans 1994, wanting to die, who is told by a mysterious, angelic White Woman that his time is not yet come.
"Vertigo," while not as rip-roaring as "Delirios," still captures that same level of dread.
Then comes what I think is the album's highpoint: "Vivir" ("To Live"). The song opens intriguingly with Chopin's “Concerto in D Minor," whose free-wheeling sense of wildness weirdly works as a perfect intro. Draco Rosa wonders if he lives only "por dejar mis huesos/y grabar mi nombre en un altar" ("to rest my bones/and record my name into an altar"). The key-signature changes, and then the Spanish trumpets barrel forward with passionate suffering--this is existential turmoil you can dance with your lover to. He sings like only a Latino can, "Que bailen los dioses..." ("May the Gods dance...") I first understood the meaning of the Spanish word "jamas" ("never forever") from this song.
"Brujeria" ("Witchcraft") is perhaps the most Halloween-appropriate song on this album; I don't think you even need to know Spanish to understand the fear that permeates it.
We then get this strange, intentionally half-formed little number called "La Flor del Frio" ("The Freezing Flower"), sung as though by a broken man banging halfheartedly at a bar piano.
The grand finale is "Amantes Hasta el Fin" ("Lovers to the End"), and seems to form a resolution of sorts, as Draco Rosa describes two dead lovers in a marble sepulcher buried under water. Did the tomb sink into the sea during an Earthquake? Or a volcano? Or a shipwreck? These questions, like all the other questions of death and mortality this album addresses, are left alone, left at peace, like these lovers beneath the waves; what matters more is that these two are finally together forever at last, "no mas lagrimas/no mas dolor" ("no more tears/no more pain") under the peace of the ocean, where they will never be separated again.
"Mientras Camino" ("As I Travel") ends the album as he began it, picking his guitar through the haunting voices of the wild.
Seriously, this album is a masterpiece, and I don't use that term lightly. I give it a spin at least every October. Enjoy!
I agree that this is Spanish rock masterpiece. In Colombia, where I live, all my friends from different music genres have a deep respect for his music. After listening to other bands such as Soda Stereo, Fito Paez, Cafe Tacuba or Caifanes, Robi came up and redefined Spanish rock, giving rock fans lyrics that were never heard, instruments so well played. Focus on the wind instruments of Penelope and Vagabundo. He is a terrific musician, seeing him live is an intimate ride in which he can drive you mad after playing Delirios and then bring you back down playing Solitary Man.
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