“O tempo” (Fabiano do Nascimento, 2017)
Source: Turismo Bahia, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
A quick perusal of the hundreds of songs I’ve translated here reveals that I often use musicians’ birthdays to choose when to post a given song. But lately I’ve been hearing a lot of music from singers and bands who either don’t have enough of a web presence for me to figure out their birthdays or they’ve simply chosen not to make that information public. A bunch of these songs are from this year so I’ve decided to start a series under a “New Releases” banner. Somewhat ironically, the first song in this new category was written almost a decade ago! But I’m still counting it because the prolific guitarist has released a new version as the lead track on his beautiful (mostly instrumental) 2026 album “Vila” (“Village”) with the Vittor Santos Orquestra.
For such a short song, the lyrics are incredibly dense, with a strong air of Northeastern Brazil both in word choice and content. Something worth noting is that “mestre” could be “master” but given the overtones of that word in English, I have decided to emphasize the “teacher” aspect of the word (which I really do believe fits the song better anyway). Also, I’m nearly positive that the “Maitá” refers to the beautiful Ponta de Humaitá (often just “Maitá” locally) rather than to a parrot, which is literally what the word means. The very next line of the song uses the colloquial “alevantar” instead of “levantar” which supports my choice of a local referent rather than a literal translation.
“O tempo (foi o meu mestre)”
O tempo foi o meu mestre
Que me ensinou a curar
Passei três dias de bruço
Debaixo do Maitá
Quando eu me alevantei
Eu no tranco dou pra curar
“Time (was my teacher)”
Time was my teacher
Who taught me to heal
I spent three days lying prone
Under Humaitá Point
When I got up
I can jump start a cure