Por

When you immerse yourself in the music of Por, you encounter a piece that strays from conventional structures. It is a song that unfolds like a list of words, nouns flowing without any apparent grammatical connection, until the preposition "por" emerges, deliberately chosen by Luis Alberto Spinetta and Patricia Salazar. This construction, which feels almost like a surrealist game, evokes the "exquisite corpse" technique popularized by the surrealist movement, where spontaneity and the accidental take precedence over strict logic. Spinetta’s vocal interpretation, accompanied solely by a twelve-string guitar, lends it an intimacy and fragility that invite deep listening.

The context in which Artaud, the album containing Por, was born is as fascinating as the song itself. Composed in 1973, the record draws from the work of surrealist poet Antonin Artaud, exploring themes of suffering, inner richness, and the marginalization of figures like Artaud himself, Emperor Heliogabalus, and Vincent Van Gogh. Spinetta conceived this work during a period of great political turbulence in South America, marked by dictatorships and the suppression of human rights. He felt a resonance between that atmosphere of despair and the nihilism he perceived in parts of the rock scene of the time. In response, Spinetta proposed a vision of rock more deeply connected to the essence of reality and love, as outlined in his manifesto Spinetta Rock: Música dura, la suicidada por la sociedad, published alongside the album. Por, as the third track of this work, presents itself as an acoustic and slow piece, an invitation to reflection within the conceptual intensity of the record.