Would you like to dance? No?

 

The old generals don’t like the songs.

They look down on them

And that’s their gravest mistake.

Because a song always brings them down.

But they won’t believe it,

Nothing will convince them.

They’ve been warned, however,

People have brought them photographs and recordings.

They look at the singers,

Find them dirty, grotesque, effeminate.

They declare confidently that those rich kids will piss their pants the moment they send the security police for them.

How can the Greek colonels possibly understand Mikis Theodorakis and Maria Farantouri?

All they saw was a young woman with long hair,

And they were wrong.

The song “To Yelasto Pedi” will bring down their regime.

 

It’s always a song that makes cracks in the walls.

On April 25, 1974,

At fifteen minutes past midnight

On Radio Renascença

They play Grândola, Vila Morena

By Zeca Afonso

—A song forbidden by the Salazar regime.

At a quarter past midnight

That song,

To all the officers in all the barracks

Is the signal they’ve been waiting for:

It’s the order to go out and take possession of the city.

Marcelo Caetano takes refuge in the barracks on the Largo do Carmo

Stunned by what is happening.

The pace quickens when the people all sing the same song,

Afonso’s song comes down from the Bairro Alto

Goes up to the Alfama,

Spreads all over Portugal.

The old generals are never wary enough of the songs.

They forbid them on the national radio,

Thinking that will be enough.

And if anyone dares speak about those songs again,

They’ll exile the singers

But that doesn’t stop Lluís Llach from composing L’Estaca.

“Si jo l’estiro fort per aquí

I tu l’estires fort per allà

Segur que tomba, tomba, tomba

I ens podrem alliberar.”

Pull this way,

Pull that way,

That’s what the people of the Mediterranean do.

Portugal,

Spain,

Greece.

Tomba, tomba, tomba . . . 

The old generals cannot believe their eyes.

Unkempt young people,

Boys dressed like girls,

Girls showing their legs

Are defying them, singing, no longer afraid.

Tomba, tomba, tomba . . . 

The songs spread from one country to the next,

Nothing stops them.

Jaruzelski, surely, never heard of Lluís Llach

Until the day a close counselor came into his office, looking contrite,

To have a word about Jacek Kaczmarski

And that song: Mury,

Which has inflamed the Solidarity strikers.

It’s Lluís Llach’s song,

Translated into Polish.

A song of walls, and stakes, and everything that must be toppled.

And suddenly the songs are on everyone’s lips, in every street,

In Catalan,

In Polish,

Runa, runa, runa  . . . 

Nothing can stop them now.

A unified call to crack open:

If you pull here,

And I pull there,

If we all pull together,

Whether it’s Franco

Or Jaruzelski,

They will fall.

Don’t wait for them to die,

Generals live to a ripe old age.

They feed off the bodies that they have broken,

Look at Franco: eighty-three years old,

Salazar: eighty-one,

Jaruzelski: ninety-one,

The four Greek colonels,

Makarezos: ninety, Papadopoulos: eighty, Ioannidis: eighty-seven, and Pattakos: a hundred and three.

Don’t wait for them to die,

Make them fall!

Spit on their names and their old bones,

The songs are stronger than anything.

Spit,

With the beautiful smile of youth.

Sing,

In the streets,

The cafés,

Sing the victory of your numbers.

The dead sing with you.

Those killed in brutal jails enter your voices

To sing with you

And bring everything toppling down.

Weep,

Dance,

Rejoice, people,

The generals fall,

And now your songs of struggle are hymns of freedom.