Songs Written with a Machete #14: I Love My Machete
I spent eighteen months of my three-year South American adventure in the Colombian wilderness, in a mountain village near the infamous Medellín. As a bluesman, I was impressed by local songs, whose lyrics would wake up even Oblomov from his lethargy. I decided to translate the juiciest pieces and bring them to you in the series Songs Written with a Machete.
Edison is loading freshly harvested cane on his mule. He does everything with only one arm because he lost the other arm years ago when it was torn off by a machine called a trapiche, which is used to process cane in the molienda (mill). He was named Edison by his father seventy years ago for good luck. He was the fifth child out of twelve. Thus, his name began with the fifth letter of the alphabet and was the first in the dictionary of the world's famous figures in the E department.
A Colombian villager isn't born with much, but he values everything he has because he will not get anything more. He has a name, a horse, a cornbread arepa and a machete. If the horse is the salt of the Colombian countryside, the machete is its pepper. The harsh and unforgiving sound of the word is very tangible. The machete can both help and hurt. It is a symbol of hard work and virtue, but also a sign of evil and hatred. And the machete is the subject of today's song by Andreas Lander.
Mi machete
I sing well, my machete,
the earth is scorched,
the plants are in the shed,
I am waiting for the rain
to start sowing.
Seize the day, Miguel,
this year is not a leap year,
the weather forecast
is looking good.
In your thoughts,
the tobacco fields
of very green leaves
are filling your hut.
I am a working man,
I have been poor since I was a child
but a downpour in May
will soon change
my terrible fate.
Seize the day, Miguel,
get up early,
clean the garden,
sow more and more
to have a lot
in the summer.
The rich greedy man
will manage to trick you.
When I sell the harvest,
what I owe I will pay,
buy rum at some party
and what's left over is for my wife.
Listen, Miguel, that's not the way things go.
I can't stand the way you are,
You live thinking about the good things
and not about your children or the future.
Edison has loaded his mule, finished singing his favourite song and is heading for the mountains with a machete slapping his thighs.
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