Last night, the news reached me: Tata Mateo Rodríguez had passed away.
We weren’t close friends, nor family, not even neighbors. But the news, like the lingering note of a final chord, stayed with me—resonating softly in the air.
In the rhythm of our days, between the routine and the ideas that cling to memory, something else lingers. We become something hard to explain—like part of a song that never quite ends. Music, always nearby, shadows us. And when it suddenly goes quiet, the silence is jarring, like missing a step on the stairs.
I imagine the sheet of music where Tata Mateo wrote down his last abajeño, the instrument now resting, still—no longer trembling under his hands, no longer breathing his soul into song. That silence, thick and heavy, settles like the final strum of a fading guitar, like a trombone waiting for a breath that will never come.
Will someone ever play those final pieces? Will we one day hear them, and come to understand just a bit more how he listened to the world?
Tata Mateo passed in his hometown, Ahuirán, on an April Monday, in the bright heat of Holy Week, beneath a blue sky that seemed to mirror eternity. He was farewelled with the very music he loved—the music he composed. The bajo slapped its rhythm, abajeños soared in the distance, trying to summon a dance, though the voices that rose were not joyful shouts, but cries of grief. But is it truly a loss? Tata Mateo’s mark is eternal—alive in his family, his friends, and above all, in the notes he joyfully drew from paper, as if knowing that by playing them, life could become immortal.
He was not seen off in solemn silence—how do you pay respects with quiet to someone who lived through song? No, his farewell came with violins, trombones, bajos, and guitars—and with every tear mixing into the dust kicked up like footsteps on the earth.
The mourning turned into pirekuas, sung in the raspy voices of those who know that we sing to keep memories alive.
Those who loved him gathered, remembering his joy and talent, telling the stories that made him legendary—like the time he cheekily named a song “How’s That Eye of Yours?” or when he boldly asked his own orchestra to play his compositions.
And so, as they returned him to the earth, life gently gathered him back, and in the sky, white sunflowers became soft clouds—carrying him from this world to the next.
In the middle of this funeral song, one thing becomes clear: though music may fall silent in an instrument, it continues to vibrate in those who dare to listen, to feel, and to remember. Because Tata Mateo—like all who truly love music—never really leaves. He becomes a seed. He becomes an echo.
