““Si Dejaseis de Cantar” elevates art into a human tool for preserving collective memory and giving dignity to existence. The verb “cantar” (“sing”) functions here as a metaphor for artistic creation, and by anaphorically repeating the title throughout the song, “Si Dejaseis de Cantar” becomes a question that gives rise to every idea in the song: “What would happen if art came to a stop?”
Elio then answers that question with increasingly significant consequences. The first thing he argues is that the dead would be consumed by oblivion if they were not immortalized through art (“Se apagaría la memoria de los que no están” (“The memory of those who are gone would fade away”)). This would give way to failure (“Fundiendo la victoria en esta oscuridad letal” (“Melting victory into this deadly darkness”)) and to the shame that comes with betraying this ideal of art (“No es ilusoria la vergüenza de tu otra mitad” (“The shame of your other half is not an illusion”)). The impact would not only be felt by those who are lost, but also within the artist and their emotions, turning the cliché of butterflies in one’s stomach on its head (“Las mariposas en la tripa olvidarían volar, empezaría a devorarme un monstruo de ansiedad” (“The butterflies in my stomach would forget how to fly, and a monster of anxiety would begin to devour me”)).
Before closing this section, Elio poses the rhetorical question of who would be foolish enough to sacrifice their individual happiness for the sake of a collective cause greater than the individual, yet fragile and sometimes invisible to others (“¿Quién sacrificaría su vida personal por un ideal escrito en sal?” (“Who would sacrifice their personal life for an ideal written in salt?”)). In the following passage, he turns the conditional directly into a question (“¿Si dejaseis de cantar…?”) and takes the conflict into metaphysical territory, asking whether, if the artist stopped creating, humanity could ever reach its full greatness (“¿…alcanzarías la belleza de la humanidad?” (“…would you reach the beauty of humanity?”)).
Elio then suggests that one of humanity’s highest ideals depends entirely on art for its existence. He makes another suggestion as well: that losing the capacity for artistic and intellectual delicacy means losing our only form of emotional processing, giving way to brutality and destruction. We are unable to externalize our crises in a gentle and civilized way without the existence of art (“Si no hay metáfora que ofrezca la sutileza, va a estallar el mal en un ring atemporal en cual no hay dualidad” (“If there is no metaphor to offer subtlety, evil will explode in a timeless ring where there is no duality”)).
Elio continues by saying that, if the artist stopped creating, the suffering of the oppressed, beautifully represented through the image of the dog, would continue as always, only now under the tyranny of total censorship, with no way to protest or find an outlet (“Si dejaseis de cantar, el perro seguiría llorando pero con bozal” (“If you stopped singing, the dog would keep crying, but with a muzzle”)). He says that people’s rebelliousness, represented through the dragon, would have no place anywhere and would undergo a metamorphosis into stagnation and sterility, represented by the coral reef, which is the opposite of the environment in which we imagine a dragon (“Convirtiendo al dragón en arrecife de coral” (“Turning the dragon into a coral reef”)).
The deadliest consequence of this, then, would be the normalization of indifference toward violence (“El silencio del rifle oficia el funeral” (“The silence of the rifle presides over the funeral”)). Pay attention to the properties attributed to the rifle here: silence, something paradoxical for a firearm, but precisely because of that paradox, it manages to strike the listener so powerfully when they hear it. Art is also given a sense of progression and accumulation, with Elio saying that, if the artist suddenly abandoned their craft, their previous efforts would lose their impact, relegating them to isolation (“Si dejaseis de cantar, yacerían desnudas tus palabras en su soledad” (“If you stopped singing, your words would lie naked in their solitude”)).
He also conceives of art as something capable of teaching both intellectually and morally, since stopping creation would mean allowing society to fall into decadence and ignorance (“Tenue bóveda celestial puede atestiguar que sin su estrella polar el barrio va pa’trás” (“The faint celestial vault can attest that without its North Star, the neighborhood goes backward”)). From the very beginning, the song has revolved around an increasingly abstract idea because of its focus on the consequences of stopping the creation of art. It is therefore natural that Elio closes by reaffirming the value of the immaterial over the material, with the former being the only thing capable of leaving a mark of humanity that nothing and no one can erase (“Porque cuando llegas al final, tan solo importa ser moral y el amor que te aporta lo inmaterial. Reverencia lo esencial y tu presencia tendrá una esencial especial; sé que es real” (“Because when you reach the end, all that matters is being moral and the love that the immaterial gives you. Reverence the essential, and your presence will have an essential quality; I know it’s real”)).
Many of the claims made in the song are true from certain perspectives, such as the idea of art serving as collective human memory or as an escape for those who cannot improve their circumstances. However, the song suffers from an excess of spirituality, going as far as to claim that what matters most is the immaterial. How can you tell that to a young person who does not know what they are going to eat today? So many things, including art, cease to matter when material reality constantly reminds us that we are flesh and blood.
In that sense, the holistic vision the song tries to offer feels like one that comes from the privileged position of someone whose basic needs are already met. Still, I do not want to be too harsh on it, since it is the album’s opening track and, above all, serves as an introduction to the universe of the rest of the body of work. Its cohesion is magnificent, and it serves as an ode to artistic creation and as a form of legitimizing high art, which is tasked with carrying the burden of preventing all the consequences laid out by Elio.”
