Montevideo welcomed Friday with applause, marching, singing, tears, and candombe dancing. Rubén Rada, the great rescuer of the region, was departing.
Juan Carlos Báez, a historian of salsa and oil, told me: “It was a real shame that Venezuela didn't know him,” and indeed Venezuela missed out on the drums of candombe, its rhythm, its joyful bustle through the streets with a historical call and recognition of Africa, because Rubén Rada vindicated Afro-Uruguayan identity.
As my dear Uruguayan colleague Ricardo Pose pointed out, Rubén Rada wasn't affiliated with the protest song movement in Uruguay, judging by his lyrics, because what he was already revolutionizing was music itself—rescuing candombe so that it could join forces with other trends in the Caribbean and Latin America (and even in Europe). But one certainly had to read Rada's lyrics very carefully to understand the source of his genuine protest, his call to action, his joyful vigilance. He never traded his joy for anything.
We had the honor of meeting and interviewing him in Cuba in 1985 and later in Caracas when he was at the Venezuelan-Uruguayan Center supporting the Broad Front cause, which ultimately allowed Tabaré Vázquez to become president.
Yesterday and Thursday we saw the crowd with the drums of the Candonguea paying homage to him, and we saw the Uruguayan flag at half-mast in mourning and we saw his coffin covered with that flag that he loved, defended and that he sang about like no one else.
I heard an interviewee say: “Rada’s joy oozed from his pores, like his eternal Afro-Uruguayan love. Perhaps that’s why, among other things, his joy taught us so much.”
Latin America has physically lost an extraordinary Uruguayan cultural figure and a great defender of Africa and its contributions to this side of the world.
