Feb 2022 spokenword collaboration jonmeta
Pete:
Jon sent me a spoken word piece in Spanish.
I wrote / recorded two versions for him to choose from. Jon liked the 2nd one best (I agree with him), so here it is.
I'm very happy with how this came out.
Thanks so much, Jon!
Jon:
Pete captured all the feel in his music even though (he says) he doesn’t understand the language. He understands feelings for sure. I wrote this by a tram stop in the big city, surrounded by tower blocks, on a day out from the tiny village we now live in, surrounded by vineyards.
“Edificios Muertos” = Dead Buildings.
Text:
Los edificios no se siembran
No se abonan
No se cultivan
Los edificios no tienen vida
Solo son fosas
donde todo se olvida.
Los edificios nunca crecen
Se multiplican pero no florecen
Son solo tierra y lodo seco
Con ojos ciegos
y el cuerpo
hueco.
Translation:
Buildings can’t be planted
They can’t be fertilised
They can’t be cultivated
Buildings aren’t alive
They’re just tombs
where everything is forgotten.
Buildings never grow
They multiply but they don’t blossom
They’re just soil and dried mud
With blind eyes
and a body that’s
hollow.
@berni1954 Mar 2022
Can't believe this is the first of your tunes I am catching up on. Aren't you on my watchlist?
Some powerful lines here and made even more powerful by the images coming in from Ukraine of bombed out blocks of flats.
@pippa Feb 2022
This is great! Powerful words and the music works like all the stop and go of traffic in a crammed city street.
@sherrycanary Feb 2022
Wonderful collaboration by 2 FAWMers I adore.
@fuzzy Feb 2022
Lovely voice here interspersed with that distant piano.
Fantastic lyrics (the English version, anyway, since I do not speak Spanish).
Really perceptive lyrics for sure.
And Pete knocks another one out of the park!
@beat Feb 2022
Beautiful collaboration. Luv the soundtrack to the voice and the poem.
But ;] one can tell, your not an architect Jon…
Thx to both of you
@kadmad202 Feb 2022
This is wild and effective. Jon, your deep, raspy voice is tangibly ominous - grave and foreboding, which suits the lyrics perfectly. The music is appropriately disorienting, and so interesting. Would love to hear more collabs from you two.
@tseaver Feb 2022
Fun collab, and a nice commentary on the brutalism of so much of the environment we've made for ourselves. "Fosas donde todo se olvida" makes me think of a post-apocalyptic story, with scattered descendents returning to the empty city to wonder, or weep.
@billwhite51 Feb 2022
from the beginning, i felt something magnificent was about to happen, and it did, punctuated by the piano's attack and retreat, jon's terse and vivid verses made a powerrful point with a measured ferocity long after he finised speaking and the piano was hushed.
@quork Feb 2022
Fantastic lyrics/spoken voice, and as others have said, set to dramatic music. Makes me curious about the other arrangement.
@blindkiwi Feb 2022
Esto me hace muy feliz! So well written and delivered Pete and Jon!
@mikeskliar Feb 2022
echoing what everyone else says, this is fantastic! love those pauses, the dramatic music, and what a provocative thought (in translation, as I don't speak/read much Spanish)
@deena Feb 2022
This is absolutely incredible. Poetry that leaves me breathless at the abrupt ending. I want to know more and why and that's what makes it so wonderful, because you've actually said it all. (thanks for the translation!)The musical setting is perfect.
@deena Feb 2022
This is absolutely incredible. Poetry that leaves me breathless at the abrupt ending. I want to know more and why and that's what makes it so wonderful, because you've actually said it all. (thanks for the translation!)The musical setting is perfect.
@kendrakinsey Feb 2022
que hermosa!
uf the feeling of living in a city sometimes!
@nancyrost Feb 2022
The pauses are so dramatic! As is the whole spoken delivery - mysterious conviction indeed, especially for me since I don't speak Spanish and didn't read the translation on my first listen. Now that I've read, I'm impressed with the meaning and poetry, and feel the angular piano lines and electronic beats suit it very well.
@hbusse Feb 2022
This is so dang cool. I just listened to it 3 times. The mysterious conviction of Jon’s delivery. The twisted neo-classical-sounding piano lines that don’t quite resolve where you want them to. The digitized sound of all of it that makes even the natural acoustic sound of the piano sound artificial somehow.