2024-04-05 09:59:30
Photo: Alfie Oficial | Instagram
Text: Editorial Cuba Noticias 360
Alfie Barver, former vocalist of the band QVA Libre, published on his Instagram profile a very personal version of the iconic song “El Necio” by singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez. “With great respect I adapted the lyrics of this beautiful song, listen to it, feel it, interpret it and if you identify, share it and tell me what you felt,” the performer wrote alongside the video.
The cover versions the most historical parts of Rodríguez’s song and the header of the video expresses, “if Silvio wrote El necio today, it would be like this.” Alfie readjusted stanzas like: “They are inviting me to be indefinite” with “Your lies are no longer going to indefine me.”
The cover was generally well received, although former Van Van Mayito Rivera did not consider Barver’s adaptation fair. “Let me tell you that this is not done brother, you did not respect anything… that’s very easy… write your own original and say everything you want”, in another comment he added: “it’s very nice and everything, there is no doubt about that… but It is not musically ethical… that is taking a low handle, destroying carvings to make people cry,” Rivera wrote in the publication.
In response to Mayito Rivera’s comment, the young performer wrote: “I am surprised that an artist who has earned the admiration of all of us for his talent and career, thinks that with this work I intend to pick short mangoes, if that were the case he would have done not only this, if not all the covers in the way they are known, just as they are originally, because that is very easy, but precisely I try too hard to do the opposite, to do the same song that you know very well but in a way that you have never heard, adapting it to my style, capturing my Cuban identity in each one of them, providing it in the most original way I can and believe me, it is not simple at all, it requires a lot of work(…).
The one who was also the author of several songs on the Funckimba album, has in his profile covers of other Cuban classics such as “El Chan Chan” and Lágrimas Negras. Barver is a Cuban singer, composer, producer and instrumentalist who became known in 2019 when he became the leading voice of the group QVALIBRE, wrote and performed several songs on the album Psicodélicamente, collaborating with artists such as Descemer Bueno.