La Parda Balcarce

(spoken)
Grandma Dominga, queen of the candombe,
teach me the song of the dark one from Balcarce,
because the carnival in Rosas ends tonight,
and my guitar wants to sing it like no one else.

(sung)
She was the flower of the banguelas,
in the neighborhood of the drum,
but no one loved her
like that singing young man.
She would close her window
when she heard his song,
because Martina Balcarce,
didn't have a heart.

For being with the unitarios
he was sentenced to die,
it was during a carnival in Rosas
when she saw him go by.
He died crippled among four
of the Restaurador,
and only then did Martina
realize that young man was her love.

I want to give him a kiss alone,
she said to the chief of the barracks,
and until they played the reveille
she was alone with him.
At ten in the morning
they executed the singer,
blacks and whites cried
in the Neighborhood of the Drum.

Poor Martina Balcarce
who looked so beautiful afterward,
she would pray for the dead
every first Monday of the month.
It was in the next carnival,
in the Neighborhood of the Drum,
a light-eyed child was born,
who was the son of the singer.

(spoken)
Grandma Dominga, who is a hundred years old,
and had been a slave of my father's father,
in the old courtyard, behind San Francisco,
who sang that song of passion and blood.

And in another carnival in Rosas,
she kissed with mortal longing
the son of the executed
and got stabbed in the back.
When Martina died
the son of her love remained,
blacks and whites cried,
in the Neighborhood of the Drum.