We’re going to learn a traditional song by Rafael Sanchez Lopez, known as “Rafuche”, an author from a region of Venezuela called “Coro”, at the west of the Country. This author was born in 1916 and quickly became an regional folk icon because of his tunes and compositions. Surprisingly he only lived 30 years but his legacy was big enough to be considered part of the history of the country.
You probably don’t know the tune, so let’s start reviewing some of the numerous videos available on Youtube:
Capella Nova – Sombra en los medanos
and
Jose Jesus Ortiz – Sombra en los Medanos
If you got hooked, a simple youtube search would show you many more covers! Go ahead and navigate other videos, but remember to come back to complete the lesson after! we know youtube can be distracting 😉
Sombra en los Medanos – Rafael Sanchez Lopez
We’ll study this song in D Mayor as is one of the easiest keys to play in the cuatro and will allow us to apply all the knowledge we recently acquired.
The chords are draw as video overlays, feel safe to play the video and learn them, although we will let you know ahead the ones for the first verse:
D – A7 – D – D
D – B7 – Em – Em
G – G – A7 – A7
Em – Gm – D – A7 (bis)
Song Lyrics
D A7 D
Bajo el claror de la luna,
D B7 Em
Sobre las tibias arenas,
G A7
entre cardones y tunas,
Em Gm D
un chuchube modula un cantar.
D A7 D
De otros distantes paisajes.
D7 G
se oye un concierto de besos,
G Gm D B7
es el mar que con su oleaje
Em A7 D
viene a la playa a besar.
***
CHORUS:
***
A7
Los cujíes lloran de dolor
D
en mi vida mustia de esperar,
A7
las caricias de un lejano amor,
D D7
que ha dejado en mi perigrinar,
G Gm
y en la ruta que marca el destino
D B7
sobre las arenas que esperan caminos
Em A7
dolorosamente se alargan mis sombras
D
sobre el medanal. ( Bis )
We bet that you never had the chance to listen to this tune before, so hope you got something out if this lesson and enjoyed learning a new song! We will now continue with our last Song, a very very well know song, called “I don’t want to miss a thing” by Aerosmith. This will give you a little bit of contrast and also help open yourself to the idea of using the cuatro for diverse genres.
