Soloist Venezuela Cuatro Repertoire: El Norte es una Quimera by Luis Fragachán (Cover)

It's been roughly over a week since I posted a video rehearsing this piece. Well, here are the fruits of all the time invested in exercises for dexterity and taking on the chord progression for this solo. If you don't know what I am talking about, you can see said video here.

The piece is a famous merengue from Venezuela called El Norte es una Quimera, composed by Luis Fragachán. This solo is by Alís Cruces. This is an interesting song as it talks about the warmth of home and the coldness of foreign land. It takes into consideration how people have gone up to the north and had ended up suffering. However, if we take a closer look to the things said in the song, we can find that his is about the culture shock implicit in any migration. Some of the verses tell about the laid-back nature of latins and how the clockwork-style-of-living in the USA (the north in the song), isn't suited for us.

It goes further as to explain a sense of pride hidden among lies. People lie about what their job was if it was something unpleasant. This calls to our present situation. Many of our countrymen have migrated looking for better opportunities and economic stability. They go on taking jobs they would've never done around here. You know those jobs: waiters, cleaning, working the land, construction. However, it just says how people lie. Maybe they washed dishes and they said they work with silver (this is a wordplay in Spanish as working with silver is what we call platero, and a dish is plato). Regardless of this saying it never goes on saying jobs like these are bad. It's just that some people do not like to admit the things they had to do in order to keep their bellies full.

Going back to the playing part, the chord progression moves on the key of D major using inversions that help bring out the melody of the song. The time isn't too fast as merengues like this have lyrics and are made to be sung. However, it is a common thing to find faster versions. I believe there's a value in interpreting things trying to keep you focus on the melody.

I hope you find this interesting and let me know if you think this attempt is better than the previous one!