“Refazenda” (Gilberto Gil, 1975)
Source: Ministério da Cultura do Brasil, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
My friends at the Brazuca Sounds podcast released a full episode today about Gilberto Gil’s landmark album “Refazenda.” I translated one of the songs from this album a couple months ago and below is my translation of the title track. As so often with Gil, his word play, which works so marvelously in Portuguese, feels like it loses something in translation. (Listen to the song and the way the sounds just float out of Gil like they were meant to be. Someday maybe I’ll take a crack at translating this song again based on sound rather than meaning.) You can see this right in the title—which is indeed literally “re” plus the word for “farm”—which sounds like a real word verb in Portuguese (it’s not, but it could be) and somehow clunks in English. This really comes into play at the end when Gil plays that made-up title word against a real word in Portuguese that is just one letter different. The king of word play himself said (credit to the website letras.mus.br for both that title and the following quote):
O período em que compus a canção é permeado por um despudor audacioso de brincar com as palavras e as coisas. É uma fase muito ligada aos estados transformados de consciência, pelas drogas, e a consequente multiplicidade de sentidos e não-sentidos.
The period when I wrote this song is permeated by an audacious shameless playing with words and things. That phase is strongly tied to transformed states of consciousness, from the drugs, and the consequent multiplicity of meanings and nonsense.
Then there is the fact that Portuguese has words for specific fruit trees while in English we have to use the word for the fruit plus the word tree. (I mean, seriously, “abacateiro” just sounds more delicious than “avocado tree,” doesn’t it?) And sometimes these aren’t even fruit trees (or other vegetation) that we even have cultural access to—like the palm tree that appears at the end. Actually, the Guariroba from the last line is more than a palm tree, it’s also the name of a farm that Gil bought with a group of friends in the state of Goiás in 1973 where they planned to build an alternative community. All told, Gil has such a skill with manipulating the most common of words into poetry, that the English also feels poetic.
“Refazenda”
Abacateiro, acataremos teu ato
Nós também somos do mato como o pato e o leão
Aguardaremos, brincaremos no regato
Até que nos tragam frutos teu amor, teu coração
Abacateiro, teu recolhimento é justamente
O significado da palavra temporão
Enquanto o tempo não trouxer teu abacate
Amanhecerá tomate e anoitecerá mamão
Abacateiro, sabes ao que estou me referindo
Porque todo tamarindo tem o seu agosto azedo
Cedo, antes que o janeiro doce manga venha ser também
Abacateiro, serás meu parceiro solitário
Nesse itinerário da leveza pelo are
Abacateiro, saiba que na refazenda
Tu me ensina a fazer renda que eu te ensino a namorar
Refazendo tudo
Refazenda
Refazenda toda
Guariroba
“Refarm”
Avocado tree, we will accept your process
We are also from the woods like the duck and the lion
We’ll wait, we’ll play in the stream
Until your love, your heart bring us fruit
Avocado tree, your harvest is exactly
The meaning of the word timeless
While time doesn’t bring your avocado
It will dawn tomatoes and sunset papayas
Avocado tree, you know what I’m talking about
Because every tamarind has its bitter August
Early, before January also becomes a sweet mango
Avocado tree, you’ll be my solitary partner
On this itinerary of lightness through the air
Avocado tree, know that on the refarm
You’ll teach me to make lace and I’ll teach you to love
Redoing everything
Refarm
Refarming all
Guariroba palms